The Journey of Atlantis_Leaving Home

by jeff knoblauch

  The admiral’s brow furrowed, “Are you saying that this was a human error?”

  “It is a near certainty. The mathematics are sound, however there seems to be another problem admiral.”

  “Let’s have it,” the admiral said, feeling like he was about to swallow something vile and unpleasant.

  “The warp drive is the wrong shape.”

  “Explain.”

  Sonny continued, “I have gone through all the calculations and backward solved some of the equations to determine the correct data and have found that the configuration for the warp generator is wrong.”

  The admiral was close to blowing a gasket, “How is it that you are just discovering this now? I thought that you were double checking the math and engineering on this Project!”

  “The problem was not detected until the test run,” Sonny explained. “As I explained earlier, there were input errors early in the design and execution of the ships warp generator. I can suggest ways to avoid this in the future.”

  “Outline your suggestions in a data packet and send it to me. Sonny, what would happen if we were to give you total control over the Project?” There was a long pause.

  “The Project would be finished as currently designed, four point seven years sooner. The extra time could be spent upgrading and adding on more necessary systems to further ensure mission success.”

  “Outline the pros and cons of such a proposal and send this to me in a separate data packet.”

  “Acknowledged,” Sonny replied.

  The admiral needed some time to chew on these events before the Consortium meeting next week. Well, he thought, you can catch up on all the sleep you missed when you’re dead. Until then, keep the caffeine rolling.

  ∆∆∆

  Consortium Meeting

  As Chairman Rocha approached the conference room, she was aware that there was an unusually large mob in front of the door. There were a lot of ‘I hadn’t heard’, and ‘I don’t believe it’, and ‘what can we do?’.

  “Madam Chairman,” a senior aid in Rocha’s office hurriedly spoke to her. “Have you heard about the attack in D.C.?”

  “I hear everything, Alfonzo,” she said without a hint of emotion. Then to the committee members, “Please, come and let us begin the meeting. The rest of you; I do not have to remind you that most of this is classified and if I find a breath of this leaves this building, it’ll be the last breath you’ll be entitled to.” The committee members looked at each other with various astonished looks and filed into the conference room. After everyone had settled down, Izzy relaxed just a little. “Good morning everyone,” she began. “We will be discussing the recent events from different perspectives, along with our regular briefings. So, without further ado; Dr. Allen, if you would start us off.”

  Dr. Matthew Allen had replaced Dr. Childress two years ago. He had worked closely with Samantha and was her right-hand man about getting things done for the Project. Samantha had a motherly instinct when it came to her staff and close friends. It was something that really worked for her. People looked to him now for direction, and he hoped to make her proud in finishing the work she started all those years before. Her health was slowing her down and she eventually and reluctantly stepped down. Matt realized that she had been grooming him as her successor, now that he thought back on things. That was like her. He still visited her from time to time. She lives right here on the Island, so he will see her and talk shop before he leaves. She will like that. When he stepped into her ‘shoes’ he thought it was like swallowing a watermelon whole. It was too much to take in. She told him that most likely he wouldn’t get used to it. It was the committee’s little joke.

  “Good morning all,” he started. “I have the latest update on the D.C. incident. All of you know at least some of the details, so I will start at the beginning and fill in the gaps for you. A week ago, a trusted member of our management at the D.C. office turned treason and committed a terrorist attack on the master database for the genetic selection project. Helen Smith; if that was ever her real name, was leaving work like always. Except that security discovered her corrupting the data. After she had done it, flags in the system alerted security and quickly reviewed the camera data and found who did it. Compliments to our security for acting so quickly. A detail was sent to apprehend her. She must have known that she might not make it out, because there was a fierce gunfight that ensued. She also must have decided that she was not going to be taken captive since we were unable to apprehend her alive. The gun she had in her possession was security issue. We checked on the watch details and found a man missing. We did a search, and found him with his neck snapped and stuffed in a closet. She must have done it shortly before she corrupted the database.”

  “Now we are left with a colossal mess. Not impossible, but a real mess to clean up. Alice is helping us reconstruct the database from the original data. We are comparing this data to the backups that Alice periodically makes, to be sure that this was not just a rouse to give us a reason to use the original data. The original data may have been tampered with to introduce a change that favored certain individuals that were originally screened out. She knew what she was doing. Helen had been with us for fifteen years. She was lining herself up to be coordinator eventually. She knew our systems intimately. She was also keeper of a lot of codes and passwords. We don’t think she was a terrorist mole from the start. We think she was recruited later at some point. Security has made a note to keep closer tabs on our higher-level employees from this point forward. We may even need to sequester people as time grows nearer to departure. That way we can better protect ourselves and our employees. I’ll let Security expand on its plans for managing employee security in his briefing.”

  “On the other fronts, installations of the sleeper units are on schedule. The newer FAB plant has gotten us back on track with production and is catching us up on total units. We have recently set up new offices on board the ship. We may also look at setting up offices on Mars as well. We need to make decisions like this if our offices come under further attacks.”

  “Thank you, Matt,” the chairman said. “I think we should hear from the Security section next, if you’re ready General.”

  “No problem Madam Chairman,” the general replied. “The incident in D.C. was just the scenario that we feared the most. An employee who was initially loyal to the cause, rose to a position of power in the organization, and then turned on us. Security has been reassessing protocols for every situation, from hiring, to entry and exit from the building, to utilizing security measures of detection and access to data. An example would be requiring more than one person to input codes when executing important programs and maintenance routines. We could require hard inputs like biometrics from multiple persons, or key cards that are hard to duplicate or expire quickly. We will also have all backups stored aboard the ship. Although Alice is quite capable of keeping the backups safe from hackers, Alice after all, is planet side and could be destroyed. We know that this possibility is small, but never underestimate the resourcefulness of a desperate mob. While these kinds of attacks have been anticipated, they are none the less difficult to guard against. You can do more careful screening, but you do not know how a person may change over the years. They are either very good actors, or become disenchanted with the whole ‘saving the species’ plan. We just must do the best we can, and hope for the best. Alice and Sonny are both good predictors of the future, and we try to utilize these talents wherever possible.”

  “These events also bring to the front that we can no longer give our enemies juicy targets to go after. We must start moving things up to the ship where they are less likely to be targets. Some examples might be anything we have large caches of special materials that we can’t do without. That would include special minerals and resources. P.A.M. people; your species collections that you have on ‘ice’ might as well start coming aboard the ship where they are destined to be. Also, anything relating to your human knowledge projec
t not already stored with Sonny. Consider moving your coordinating business to the ship. If we can give them less targets of opportunity, the better off we will be. The down side to this is that all the eggs will be in one basket. On the other hand, if anything catastrophic happened to the ship, the human race is screwed anyway.” Over the last ten years, we have stopped forty-three attacks before they were implemented. There have been seventeen attacks in progress that were put down, three with objectives completed, and fourteen objectives uncompleted. And lastly, there were two attacks that have taken us by surprise, one of which was the D.C. incident.”

  “Thank you, General Zhou,” Izzy said feeling a little depressed. “And now, we will hear from the Logistics Section. Whenever you’re ready Dr. Daniels,” Izzy announced.

  “Thank you, Chairman Rocha,” Jeff smiled as he took his place at the dais. Dr. Jeffrey Daniels sometimes believed that he was living someone else’s life. That he would wake up and his ‘real life’ would take over. He grew up like many of his generation, living under the dread of the neutron star and the promise of the Project. He believed in the Project. That was not just programming from all the propaganda and the rallies that were periodically held. No, he felt that humankind was just fortunate enough that this disaster of all disasters came at a time when humans could pull themselves out of the jaws of death. If the star had come a calling say, a couple of hundred years ago, we would have been snuffed out. As it was, it was going to be a close call. He had worked hard all his life. He worked in the farms, and studied hard in school. His father had taught him about never giving up, and everything having a purpose. But that seemed so long ago. Ever since he had been noticed by Dr. Deng his career took on a life of its own. He was quite skilled at making quotas and schedules. Jeff’s professional life revolved around construction. He was an engineer by schooling, but Jeff had a kind of ‘street smarts’ that allowed him to choose the right people and make the right demands of staff to get the job done. He knew how to rally people to the cause. This must have struck such a chord with Deng that he took him under his wing. Cheng helped him to hone his already potent potential as a creative engineer and a very good manager. He did not know at the time that he was being groomed for something bigger. He was just delighted to work directly under one of the Consortium members. That was almost ten years ago. Things have been a whirlwind ever since he met Dr. Deng. It has been eight years since Dr. Cheng Deng had retired, and six years since his passing, and he still felt like he was in the whirlwind. He did not understand how anyone in the Consortium could live longer than ten years dealing with this kind of daily stress. He hoped he had the same fortitude that Dr. Deng had and make him proud.

  “It’s a pleasure to see you all again,” he began. “The short story is that quotas are good and schedules are being met. This is in large part due to Alice and Sonny managing about 90% of the transports coming and going at the spaceports. Getting payloads to the spaceports are sometimes a tricky proposition, depending on what part of the globe you’re on. When a hotspot crops up, we have security move in and work the area. The troubles go away only to crop up somewhere else. I don’t know if I share Alice’s optimism about our projections, but she’s rarely wrong. Shipboard logistics on the outside is almost solely managed by Sonny. About 70% of the outside workers are robots. Humans mostly man jobs like truck drivers and delivery vehicles to bring material to the robots. On the inside, it is more the reverse. More than two thirds of the workers doing the terraforming and construction are human. Robots help fill in when humans need rest, or to do more dangerous tasks. Fortunately, I do not have many complaints for this briefing. I am grateful for the teamwork atmosphere the other sections provide for everyone else. It does make my job a whole lot easier, as I hope the services that I provide the rest of you are equally valuable.”

  “It is valuable,” Chairman Rocha complimented. “I am sure that all of our predecessors would be pleased at our progress, and may we all continue with that progress until we lay our burdens down for the last time. Let us go ahead and break for lunch,” Izzy announced.

  Lunch was uneventful. As was usually the case, most of the members took this time to check in with their subordinates and partners. Later, when members were trickling back in from lunch, Izzy overheard the admiral and the general talking shop.

  “Yes, I remember what happened two years ago, Min,” Admiral Johnson replied. “That nuclear weapon in the cargo hold of the transport headed for the Hawaiian Islands was shot down by one of our destroyers long before it was any real threat.”

  “Of course, Leo,” General Zhou continued. “But what I was pointing out is that your destroyer was also under attack at that time. These attacks are getting more coordinated, and more organized. My fear is that they will stumble around until they get lucky enough to really screw the pooch for us.”

  The admiral sympathized, “You have to keep the faith, brother. You must keep telling yourself that they have been honing their skills for forty years, but so have our side. We just have to stay ever vigilant and creative to keep them at bay.”

  “I just like the scorched earth idea better,” the general said a little wistfully.

  “It looks like we’re all here, so if you’ll take your seats, we will get started,” Izzy announced. “Next on the agenda is the Construction Section. Dr. Iversen, if you are ready, please start.”

  “Thank you, Madame Chairman,” Loke started. “Between the massive effort the construction robots have provided, and Alice and Sonny running the launches and logistics, we have managed two extra rings constructed for a total of forty-five now complete. On top of that, the one mile replica was also built and tested. I’ll let the admiral discuss the results of the tests. The tests however, resulted in the scrapping of the warp generator assembly and reconfiguring it. We had more than half of it built. It was a good thing we built the scale ship. It’s a little over a mile long and just over two hundred feet wide. We have begun stripping the generator off the outside of the ship. We’ll leave the connections to the power sources and spinal column inside since this is just a reconfiguring. These setbacks will double the time for that phase to complete. However, this isn’t anything to worry about. It will be completed in plenty of time to test and do a shakedown of the ship before departure.”

  “Loke, what did you mean by the ‘spinal column’,” Matt asked.

  “Oh, the ‘spinal column’ is a slang term that describes the main trunks of hard lines that communicate up and down the ship. It is partly how Sonny communicates to the ship and interfaces with us humans. Other lines branch out from the trunk like nerves from a spinal cord. The ship actually has two ‘spinal cords’ running 180 degrees of each other for efficiency and redundancy reasons. Sonny could still do his jobs if this was the only mode of communication. Sonny also communicates in a variety of wireless ways both locally and outside the ship. If wireless communications were down, or for some reason dangerous to use, Sonny could still run the ship.”

  Now it was Gwen’s turn to be inquisitive. “Why would wireless communications be dangerous?”

  “The short answer is, we don’t know,” replied Loke. “We could think of a thousand ways this might be so, but really we have very little experience with interstellar travel to know for sure that we won’t run into a problem of this nature, and it is good to be prepared. We do not want a scenario in which Sonny becomes crippled. We do have contingencies in case that happens, but you don’t want to think about it. We are building an extra million sleeper units as part of one of those contingencies.”

  Gwen asked, “Why would we need them?”

  “Because,” Matt said, “If something catastrophic happened, and the ship became uninhabitable, you need a place for the crew to go and let Sonny do the driving to our destination.”

  “Quite right,” Loke acknowledged. “Between Sonny and the human engineers, we do figure a lot of stuff out. But Sonny is only as good as the data will take it. Although human’s imaginations are bet
ter than Sonny’s, this too only goes so far. Space is dangerous because there are limitless unknowns waiting for us out past our little sun. Space becomes less dangerous the more we know and understand our new environments.”

  “We have built three more spaceports for a total of nineteen. Alice estimates that twenty-five spaceports will be optimal to complete the Project. Plans for the final six spaceports are already in the acquisition phase, and hope to complete these in the next ten years. The quicker that we can make them ready and start service, the more work we can do over the years we have left. I know I speak for everyone when I say that the sooner we can finish the Project, the better the whole planet will feel.”

  “Thank you Dr. Iversen,” Izzy smiled appreciatively. “Next up, we have Resources section. Raj; if you’re ready.”

  Dr. Rajesh Mahmud made his way to the dais. His arthritis in his back was acting up badly today and he was using his cane. He sometimes wondered why with all the technological discoveries that were routine anymore, people would have solved this medical problem. On the other hand, it was not a focus for study directly related to the Project. That was the funny thing about living in these times. Some areas of science bordered on magic, and others had not really changed in a hundred years. He could use a little magic today.

  “Good afternoon, everyone,” he began. “First off, I would just like to say a heartfelt thank you to all of you here. It has been an honor serving you and my planet for just over forty years. As you may have noticed, I brought a guest. He motioned to the person in the front row. Dr. Kyle Jakande has recently been approved as my successor in this grand endeavor. His bio is included in my data packet for your perusal. Please make him feel as welcome as you’ve made me these many years. Kyle, I wish you good luck in your new endeavors.” Raj smiled, “You don’t really know what you are getting yourself into.” There were knowing chuckles amongst the tight knit group.