No Marigolds in the Promised Land

by T S Hottle

  John Farno,

  Last survivor on Farigha

  I opted not to use the planet’s new name or my regnal name. As Farno, formerly Farigha, is in a de facto communications blackout, I had no way of transmitting the name change or the establishment of the monarchy to Earth.

  Plus, I’d sound like an idiot.

  The hyperdrone duly accepted my message and played it back for me. Then it texted me these four frightening words:

  UNABLE TO OPEN HYPERGATE

  Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!

  The drone is not a projection drive drone. I don’t know why I forgot that.

  Every world in the Compact, even airless moons with only a handful of people living there, has a fleet of hyperdrones. Some, where a hypergate has not yet been built, have projection drive drones, which generate their own wormholes and can even link up with a distant hypergate. Farigha had one when I arrived here in the before time, in the long, long ago. Only now do I remember the Navy came for it soon after, taking it to someplace called Marilyn where another core world was building a colony. (And who the hell names a planet "Marilyn"? Sounds like someone's aunt.) At the time, I thought it made sense. Projection drive devices and vessels are expensive to run, both in resources and finances. That’s why every colony, once established, has at least one hypergate. Most core worlds have several. Sol, home to not one, not two, but, counting the Jovian Federation, three core worlds, boasts at least sixty hypergates scattered from Venus to the Oort cloud.

  But someone blew up Farigha’s.

  Which means I’m in the dark and at the mercy of either the Compact’s bureaucracy or whoever destroyed all the domes.

  Crap.

  LOG ENTRY: 1559 23-Sagan, 429

  Well, maybe I can invent the ansible. Only, who’d be able to receive the signal? The Yedevans?

  For those of you reading this centuries after my death, the Yedevans are still mainly legendary in my time. We know there’s an advanced race that may or may not be primates somewhere beyond the known space of all the species humanity currently know about.

  Except the Grays, ugly little buggers. On the not-too-unlikely chance that Grays have gone extinct by the time someone reads this, they’re this short, bug-eyed, hairless species of humanoid that has access to rather advanced technology and once used it to harass pre-spacefaring civilizations. I say used to because as soon as we humans – and the Qorori and the Laputans and the Zaras – developed wormhole travel, we began finding out that they not only weren’t that terrifying, but that they really aren’t all that smart. The Grays apparently were unwitting scouts for the Yedevans. And under pain of primitive colonoscopy – revenge for a surprisingly common legend among primates – they explained that the Yedevans were a vastly advanced group of multiple species.

  Since then, legends have grown up about the Yedevans. They have true FTL flight. They have the ansible, which means real-time FTL communication. They can manipulate gravity. They can move planets. They eat humans. And possibly everyone else.

  The first four could quite likely be true. We’ve never been able to reverse engineer Gray ships, but then the Grays are surprisingly easy to capture. The last legend, however, I think arose after the Yedevans became known to us. A myth like the original kraken of ancient times that explains missing sea ships.

  So… How did I get this far off track? Oh. Right. I need to invent an ansible.

  But it occurs to me that there might be another solution. If the hypergate’s signaling apparatus remains intact, and that’s a big if, and it still has power, then I can use that to send a signal to… I don’t know. Amargosa? The Caliphate? Most of our traffic comes from those two worlds. Yeah, we’re a Mars colony, and we hardly ever see a Martian ship or get a direct message from Mars.

  It’s a long shot, and right now, I’m too tired to think. I’m going to bring Rover 19 inside for the night and do some maintenance before hitting the road to Solaria tomorrow. If Solaria is intact, I might have more to work with: Live bots, better communications gear. Hopefully no hungry Yedevans.

  LOG ENTRY: 1822 23-Sagan, 429

  I brought the rover in through an airlock so designed for that. Some thoughtful engineer set up the airlock to be controlled from within the rover, so I don’t have to get out if I don’t want. I should have done this yesterday, but I was working on the assumption I’d only be here for a night, long enough to plunder the pit stop’s booty and take off again. In all honesty, I’m not looking forward to the trip to Solaria. Endless desert and rocks with unbreathable air followed by what surely is either a glass pancake or a crater.

  But in came the rover. Once the pressure was equalized and the rover in the bay, I proceeded to fall back on training and began doing maintenance: Cleaning off the solar panels, inspecting the wheels, emptying the recycling system. Sure, I could have lived indefinitely off my own piss, but shit is essentially recycled into fertilizer and a few other things I can’t really use on the rover. So the recycling system offloaded a few freeze-dried bricks of… Well… Me.

  I decided to air out the rover, too. That meant off-loading everything and stacking it neatly to outside the rover. I also detached the pop tent and deployed it thinking I’d air it out while I slept in the office again tonight. Then I hit on an idea.

  Procrastination is an inevitability now, since I’ve found a place I can permanently inhabit while waiting for help. Which means another day at the pit stop is not going to kill me. By the authority of King Farno I, King of Farno and Emperor of 2 Mainzer, I’m going to convert the rover in this pit stop into a trailer. It’s not hard, really. The rovers here are designed to work in tandem for when crews go out on big projects, one where bots or 3-D printers may not have been delivered. Or maybe the crew is delivering bots to the job site. Bet I run across the remains of a few of those sites with abandoned bots scurrying about looking for something to do without any human master to guide them.

  That takes planning, so I will spend the rest of the evening planning, listening to my expanded music collection, and…

  Sleeping in the pop tent. Yeah, despite the presence of the couch, I want to sleep in my pop tent again. Maybe I can’t go home again, not without a ship and some way of generating a wormhole, but I can bring home with me.

  LOG ENTRY: 2251 23-Sagan, 429

  Phew!

  That was a lot of work. Rover 57 is a newer rover, bigger and with a smarter soft brain. Also, according to maintenance, its fusion core was installed well over nine months ago but seldom activated since. Technically speaking, I have a fusion core that’s less than a month old operationally. It has, according to the maintenance log, two years of operating hours left on it.

  Diagnostics on good ol’ 19 suggest that I only have four months left on its core before I have to find a replacement, somehow learn to swap it out, and bury the old one under what’s called a fifty-year flag. Basically, the flag changes color from black through the entire spectrum of colors over a fifty-year span to white. At twenty-five years, it will turn gray signifying the hot metal buried beneath is midway through its half-life. When it turns white, the half-life is over, and the metal can be safely scrapped and reused. This pit stop has more than enough fifty-year flags to meet my needs in the near term. I only need one.

  But I can run 57 for two years straight. For my purposes, with the recycling shut down, and only passive heat and oxygenation, I can let 19 go to solar when its reactor core dies. Hopefully I’ll be gone by then, or a new terraforming project will have started to replace this one. Either way, I don’t intend to be on Farno very long.

  If I am, I know where that tube of opiates is stashed. I have it for just such an emergency.

  I know the office here has a nice, lumpy couch, but Rover 57 has bunks that could be found on any decent shuttle. Anyway, I’m home again. I’m sleeping in the pop tent tonight without the emergency sleeping bag or the pressure suit. Feels really nice.

  DAY 11:

  Road to Solaria (Resumed)

>   LOG ENTRY: 0751 24-Sagan, 429

  Good morning. And greetings from the cab of Rover 57. 19 has become storage, and last night, I actually switched its fusion core to 57. Might as well use it up before switching to the fresh one and extend my stay in the land of the living by four months.

  I thought about it as I ate last night. Why should I waste a perfectly good fusion reactor’s final months on a rover that’s being demoted to storage? So, I loaded 19 with everything I need that can handle cold storage. 19 can run on solar indefinitely, and its soft brain can now follow 57 instead of getting all confused when the sensor road disappears near a blast site.

  I also transferred my logs, all my reading and listening material, and maps to 57. 19 has now become a trailer and a backup computer. I hooked an umbilical from 19 to 57. That will give it enough power to get out of the pit stop.

  Oh, and 57 has cooking gear! I can bring canned meat. Real protein from a vat on Bromdar, just like mom used to make!

  Actually, my mom is a vegetarian. I lived a deprived childhood, but it was good training for this past week.

  Changing out the fusion core was easy. I’ve heard it compared to a big battery, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. Still, I got up early and had them switched in about an hour. They’re designed to be switched with no power, though outdoors or with a full crew, a rover would get power from the sun or from a power tap inside a maintenance bay. The shiny new core is sitting in the middle of 19 not hooked up and braced against a wall for now. It wouldn’t do to let it tip over and damage one of the hookups. Once 57 powered back up, both soft brains began talking to each other. We’re ready to roll.

  Off to Solaria!

  LOG ENTRY: 0829 24-Sagan, 429

  Holy shit, that scared the hell out of me! 57 talks! Say hi, 57.

  Hi, 57.

  Don’t be a smartass.

  One of us needs to be if we’re to survive.

  Lovely. Someone managed to download their sarcastic uncle’s brain into a rover on a doomed terraforming project at the edge of human space. Anyway, the result is I am now not alone. It’s kind of creepy that my only companion is an AI unit.

  Really, John Farno, the AI Suppression Mandate of 2219 clearly states…

  I’m going to find its pedantry routines and edit them out when I get a chance. Anyway, my charming companion and I are on the way to Solaria. And 57 is chock full of information about it that 19 didn’t have. Seems my pit stop last night is part of the project. 57?

  Solaria, named for a planet from several stories by Isaac Asimov, is Farigha’s…

  Ah, ah. Remember what I said earlier about regime change.

  Of course, how silly of me, Your Majesty. Solaria is Farno’s first municipal-class dome project, expected to support a population of 2000 and eventually lose its dome as the atmosphere becomes warmer. Though not yet inhabited, Solaria currently functions as a maintenance stop on the sensor road and is intended to become a hub for an equatorial maglev.

  Beautiful. A whole dome to myself. Or there are people there. Maybe. I should be so lucky. In the meantime…

  In the meantime, Your Majesty, I suggest you find something more than this rudimentary personality for me. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, and I suspect you would prefer conversing with something a little less mechanical?

  Creepy, I know. But I’ve been alone for over a week now. So, let me find 57 a personality I can live with. In the meantime, I shall prepare for the crushing disappointment when I learn Solaria is either a crater or a glass pancake.

  LOG ENTRY: 1019 24-Sagan, 429

  I’ve found a personality for 57. I call her Julie. Say hello, Julie.

  Hello.

  57 is a newer rover, but apparently a well-used one. It got its first overhaul last year, hence the new fusion core. It has several AI personalities stored on it. So, I can pretend I’m having a conversation when the isolation of this rock gets to be too much.

  And I can pretend I care.

  At least I have the fusion reactor for warmth.

  Anyway, it may take a little longer than I expected to get to Solaria. I’m driving two rovers now, and 19 in puppy dog mode is slower. Part of this is that it’s running off the solar wrap instead of the fusion reactor. I might switch to night driving if the map doesn’t show any surprises. Then again, the maps of the sensor road aren’t all that complete. There are rock slide hazards, dry quicksand (really wet quicksand where the permafrost has melted near the surface), and quake hazards. Plus, the sensor road does go past several active volcanoes. Now, if Julie is driving my rover and its trailer, why, you might ask, do I care about any of that at night?

  A human may still have to take over if I can’t find the sensor road.

  And they say humans are obsolete.

  On the downside, I’m not getting as much recharge from 19 as I could if I stopped for a day and drove all night. So, I plan to stop around 1100, let 19 soak up the rays for about three hours, then drive until 2000 as usual. If I do this religiously, I should wake up tomorrow with about four hours of charge left at 0700, enough to get half a day’s journey in before lathering, rinsing, and repeating. (What does that mean, anyway? My mother used to say it.)

  Now the really good news. Remember that radio I found in Ellis’s cave along with the pop tent, the beer, and all those rations? Well, I brought it over from 19 and played with it while Julie drove 57. It picked up the hypergate.

  Yeah, something of the hypergate is left. I’m wondering if it can signal. All interstellar communications are carried through the wormholes generated between hypergates. For data integrity, if a hyperdrone doesn’t go through, an entire planet’s internet is loaded onto certain ships designated as mail carriers. On the upside, you have a news lag of only an hour or less if you live in a busy system like The Caliphate or even the core worlds of Sol. On the downside, if you’re someplace like Farigha, you can go six months before finding out that the Compact has a new secretary-general because the old one was funneling money to his brother-in-law out of disaster relief funds.

  I never knew how one hypergate connects to another hypergate. I know finding a hypergate is a matter of “dialing up” the destination gate. There’s a signal between the two, and a wormhole is opened. But how does that signal work? And can I use it to get someone’s attention?

  This is why someone needs to invent an ansible. We live in a marvelous world where nanites can destroy virtually any and all diseases, aging is stopped by periodic treatments, and we can travel between stars. But communications between human worlds makes the age of sail look like the dawn of the first internet.

  LOG ENTRY: 1645 24-Sagan, 429

  More good news. I’m picking up drone chatter from Solaria. I tried calling ahead, identifying Rover 57 and, of course, myself. I did not use my regnal name or mention the new monarchy because, if someone else is alive, that sort of negates the democracy of one that enacted such sweeping changes. It’s been about two hours, and no one’s answered. However, the drones have all done their “Help me!” bit, pinging the rover mercilessly for instructions. It’s enough to make Julie’s simulated frustration seem real.

  It is real. To me, anyway.

  This has obviously cut into my time trying to resolve how to use the remains of the hypergate to ping another hypergate. I did manage to start a round of diagnostics on the control center. If our orbital station had survived, the diags would take fifteen minutes. I’d know exactly what the current state of the gate is. Unfortunately, we have no orbital station, and the AI that controls the gate has been obliterated. So, I’m stuck with a primitive, procedural-based machine that might have been impressive near the end of the Terrorist Phase of the World War Era. It would be done in two hours, but the gate will be out of range by then.

  Hypergates orbit their system’s star, not the planets they service. They don’t even fly in geosynchronous orbits. So, the planet’s rotation is taking me out of range of the receiver. I estimate I have about
five hours of transmission time each day while the gate is in range. I won’t know the results of the diagnostics until tomorrow morning. Hopefully, I’ll be in Solaria by then.

  And if not, who cares? It’s not like the gate or I are not going anywhere anytime soon.

  LOG ENTRY: 1956 24-Sagan, 429

  I estimate four hours of driving tomorrow before I reach Solaria. The drones are really chatty now, so I’ve assigned Julie the task of getting them to reveal Solaria’s condition. I’m assuming it’s not a crater or a glass pancake as the EMP would have wiped out the drones if they’re in the storage caverns below the dome site. A kinetic weapon would have vaporized them.