NanoSymbionts

by Joseph Philbrook

  “Well I'm glad it'll work out for you,” Mike's voice said cheerfully. “But I've gotta get back to work. So like I said, have a nice trip.”

  With that the screen went blank but even as the sound channel closed they heard the fist two notes of the tune Mike was already whistling as he resumed whatever he'd been doing when Jake's request got his attention.

  “That Mike is one in a trillion,” Jess said. “But he left us a with a real problem ya know.”

  “Yes,” interrupted Sam, who was now standing just behind them. “Jake said he ordered 6 of each meal. And Mike said we only got 4 of the beef stew. Even when we add in that yummy lamb stew of his, the total won't divide well by the three of us. There's going to be one extra meal left. I think we should agree now that when we have the beef stew we should divi-up the extra serving between us so we don't wind up fighting over it.”

  “Works for me,” Jake said.

  Then as he stepped out of the airlock into the shuttles interior, Sam noticed that it was surprisingly roomy. There was a short wide aisleway between a small collection of doors. To his right was one marked with a sign proclaiming it to be a ‘galley’ and to his left, one door was marked ‘bath’ and the other ‘toilet’.” Just beyond this, the central area had three pairs of reclining seats that looked much more comfortable than anything he'd seen on a commercial airplane. There was an aisle on either side of the seats. The other side of both aisles were lined with an assortment of control panels cabinets and display screens.

  Just forward of the seating area there was a partition that provided a large view screen. Which extended from about a foot above the floor to about a foot below the ceiling. There was just enough room to walk around behind either side of the partition. Sam could see the lower part of an open doorway under it.

  The huge view screen appeared to be showing a black and white image of the other side of the doorway. Which evidently led to a cockpit with two more seats. On either side of the cockpit door there were two more closed doors. Jess noticed where Sam was looking.

  “The door on the left leads to the engineering crawlways that we shouldn't need to use,” Jess said. “On the right is the access ladder up into the overhead exercise bubble. There'll be plenty of time to look around after we launch Sam. For now please pick a seat and strap in for take off. You'll find that there's a storage compartment in the base of the seat. The cushion lifts up. You can put your duffel in there.”

  The cradle positioned them inside the the doorway to the left of the one Steve's shuttle had left by. Then the door closed behind them. Sam could see through the still open cockpit door via the big screen, a black and white image of a large, vertically positioned, oval meshwork of some metallic substance in front of the shuttle. Then the cockpit door closed. Suddenly Jake's face appeared in the center of the view screen.

  “Sam, you'll find that the view screen will respond to the control pad in your right hand armrest” Jake's image said. “The view you just had is on channel 1. You can see me like this on 2 and Jess is on 3. If you want to see the both of us at once use 4. If you want entertainment, try a two digit number. And if you really think you want the same forward view we have, punch in zero. In which case you should know, in the event that you feel like your going to be sick, you'll find a barf bag attached to the outside of your left armrest. The portal chamber has been depressurized. So I'm about to lock in the coordinates and activate the portal.”

  Sam wasn't sure what the difference was between channel 1 and zero but 1 sounded safer. He punched it in just in time to see the meshwork begin to glow. Then suddenly it seamed to disappear. In it's place was an inky blackness spattered with bright specks that he thought must be stars. He saw Jake's elbows move as he felt the ship lift up then suddenly he was gently pushed against the backrest as the shuttle accelerated forward.

  There was an odd looking distortion of the view as the shuttle passed into the portal. It happened so fast that he almost didn't notice that the visual image had been distorted, before it wasn't. At which point he felt the universe turn inside out. That sensation didn't last long either. Even so he was suddenly real glad Jake had told him where the barf bag was. He hoped he could get it over his mouth in time.

  They were traveling with about a third of an Earth gravity of thrust when they passed through the portal into ‘space’. Jake thought that was pretty good for the ion thrusters that had pushed them through the portal. Of course, he already knew from his simulator training that the small guild design thrusters packed a lot more punch than any form of ion drive known to Earth science. However he did want to get to stellar escape velocity as soon as possible. So he quickly targeted the fast moving particles in the solar wind with the induction cycle of the primary transduction thrusters. It was all moving away so fast that he'd get some measurable thrust just pulling it into the thrusters. In a couple of seconds he was pulling in enough particles to warrant initializing the matter to energy conversion cycle. Converting nearly half of them to the energy he needed accelerate the rest of them to relativistic speeds. He brought both the particle injectors and the inertial compensators on line, even as he disengaged the ion thrusters.

  Jake calibrated the inertial compensator to suit his preference of feeling 1.3 gravities of the thrust. Had he not done so, the automatic setting would have neutralized the full thrust and activated a 0.3 gravity artificial gravity circuit. That would have kept the illusion of down being under their feet instead of behind them. The inertial compensator kept the subjective thrust steady at 1.3 gravities even as the actual acceleration reached over 50 gravities of force.

  A couple of hours later, they had attained enough outward momentum and nearly enough distance from the sun's gravity well. For them to risk engaging the fringe effect drive's rift generator. At which point he cut the primary thrusters, changed the attitude of their shuttle as he engaged the vertical ion thrusters to their design thrust of 0.4 gravities. He would augment that later with simulated gravity from the inertial compensators, but he thought 0.4 gravity would do for now.

  Meanwhile, it had been a long two hours for Sam. After a while he had started to experiment with the view screen controls. He discovered that on channel 0, he could call up a tactical view of the solar system, with which he could select an object like one of the larger planets, and automatically focus the standard view towards it. Then he discovered how to magnify the image and was suddenly very puzzled by what he saw.

  It was about half an hour after that when Jake made the switch to the vertical thrust ion drive. Then Jake activated his control override for the main view screen to insure that his image would be visible to Sam. Jake turned to face him, as he pointed first down, then up.

  “The simulated gravity is a little weak Sam,” he explained. “But the floor will be down for a while, cause we're going that way. Why don't you stretch your legs a bit. Get used to moving around in less than half a gravity while you familiarize yourself with the ship.” The monochrome image of Sam that was displayed on Jake's side of the partition screen blinked a couple of times before Sam's image groaned with obviously exaggerated discomfort.

  “Are we there yet?” Sam's image asked in a mockingly childish voice. Then he added in a more serious manor, “Tell me something Jake. Why is it that when I look at your backs and the view from the cockpit, the big screen is like a black and white TV. And yet if I look directly outside on channel zero it's in living color?”

  “That's cause it's programmed to automatically select a monochrome display,” Jake replied. “Whenever it's displaying the shuttle's interior.”

  “OK,” Sam's image said. “Now tell me why that ringed planet I'm looking at looks so much like Saturn?”

  “Because it is Saturn Sam,” Jake said. “Or at least this universe's equivalent of it. And before you ask, the reason you don't find anything where Earth should be is because this universe's Earth was destroyed a long time ago.”

  “Oh, I guess that makes sense,” Sam's image replie
d. “But if that Saturn looks so much like ours, why can't I find Jupiter's red spot?”

  “Because we are far to close to see that,” Jake explained.

  “What?” Sam's image protested. “But that makes no sense at all.” Sam would have said more on the subject, but Jake interrupted him.

  “It would make sense if we could look at it from about 40 thousand lightyears away Sam,” Jake explained. “Then, if we could gather enough of the light that was reflected off of it that long ago, we could watch the big storm that the spot was made of fade away. You see Sam, there are many alternate realities. Each one is different in some way from any other. Our home universe is somewhat younger than this one.”

  Sam thought about it for a moment. Then he just shook his head and unstrapped himself and was soon tentatively walking around. Or trying to walk. Realizing that Sam didn't have any previous low gravity experience and he couldn't adapt as quickly as Jake obviously had, Jess took pity on him and explained.

  “We're not going to stay at this low gravity level long enough to really be worth trying to acclimate your reflexes Sam,” Jess said. “So unless you need the rest room, I'd recommend you stay seated for a while.”

  When Jess returned to the cockpit, Jake was just logging out of the main control panel.

  “I've got the baseline for the fringe course preloaded into the navigation system Jess,” Jake said. “Along with a running recalculation program for the preliminary power levels and entrance vectors for the fringe effect generator. They should serve as a reasonable baseline guide for at least the next 4 hours.”

  Jess just grunted.

  “Of course your welcome to check my figures,” Jake added.

  Jess gave him a disgusted look. He didn't put much faith in advance calculations for fringe effect flights.

  “Sure I'll do that,” he said. “Right before we go. Just give me about 5 minutes warning when your ready.”

  Jake just smiled and headed for the main cabin.

  They all thoroughly enjoyed the Lamb stew. They were facing each other because they had showed Sam how to reverse the position of his chosen seat. He had picked the front row when they had first told him to sit down and now he felt like it was ‘his’ seat.

  Jake and Jess had taken the seats in the second row. The seats were equipped with fold out trays that were holding the rapidly disappearing stew meals. Each one of which had been packed with a roll and a piece of apple pie. When the last morsel of food had disappeared Jake stretched.

  “As soon as your both ready,” he said. “I think it's high time I engaged the fringe effect drive.”

  “Just let me run a recalc on those figures,” Jess said as he headed for the cockpit. Detouring to drop his empty meal pack & utensils in the auto-sanitizer.

  Sam turned his chair back to it's forward facing position and started to strap in before he realized his mealpack container was still on the tray.

  “Let me get that for you,” Jake offered as he scooped up Sam's dishes and walked them back to sanitizer. After which, as he headed for the cockpit Jake added, “Ya know Sam, you won't really need the harness. A fringe effect insertion isn't like that. If I mess up bad enough for us to even feel a little bump...”

  He left the rest unsaid. Sam appeared to swallow a mouthful of nothing and began to slowly unfasten his harness. Noticing a look of real worry on his face Jake tried tongue in cheek humor.

  “Relax Sam,” Jake said. “I've done this a hundred times... in the simulator. And more often than not, it said I survived... Aren't you glad you came along for the ride?” Then he quickly added “Seriously though I only failed the simulator once. And that was before I read the instructions. You do know this is only a training flight. We are still close enough to Earth's physical coordinates, that I could arrange for the portal to open an exit door to take you back to hillside.”

  There was fire in Sam's blue-in-black eyes when he replied.

  “No! I don't care how nervous I get,” Sam insisted. “Your not sending me back... If you and Jess feel safe enough for you to do this, then I'm not gonna chicken out. I'm just not!”

  “Your a brave man Sam,” Jake said gently. “And I'm sorry, perhaps I shouldn't have teased you. But since there is ‘some’ risk that I could screw this up, I needed to know that you were really sure about going with us. I wouldn't think less of you if you chose to go back you know. And I don't think Jess would either.”

  Sam looked deeply into Jake's eyes as he answered.

  “You can't really think I'm brave?” he said incredulously. “I'm scared out of my mind! But I'm going anyway. You won't make me go back will you?”

  Jake smiled as warmly as he knew how.

  “I can see both that very real fear in you Sam,” he explained. “As well as a strong resolve to face that fear. Yes Sam, I'd call that brave. In fact as of now, I've decided that you are actually one of the bravest men I've ever met. I say that because you are obviously very frightened, yet you won't let that fear get the best of you. And no I won't make you go back, I'm proud to have you with us.”

  “Careful Jake,” Jess spoke up as he returned from the cockpit. “You'll give him a swelled head. But actually Sam, I agree with him. Course I've known you longer, so I'm not really very surprised. Still My opinion of you has gone up a notch or two lately.” Then he added, “By the way Jake, I've checked your baseline and it still looks viable. I'd say were ready to go.”

  “Good,” Jake replied, “By the way Jess, did you want to explain it to Sam? Or shall I do it?”

  “No Jake, news this serious should only come from a true friend,” Jess replied with a deadly serious expression on his face.

  “Oh!” Jake replied. “So you want me to be the one to ruin his whole day.”

  “Would one of you just please tell me what your talking about,” Sam interrupted them.

  “Well lets just say that I hope you've enjoyed the low gravity,” Jake began.

  “Yeah,” Jess took over the explanation. “You see the planet Slowlane is a little heavier than Earth. So when we get there we are going to have to deal with a gravity 15% greater than Earth's.”

  “It'd take my nanites just a few minutes to fully adapt my muscles to it.” Jake picked it up from there.

  “It'd take a few hours,” Jess added. “For my augmentation grade nanites to do the same for me. But your going to have to make do with Hillside's nano-meds.”

  “And if their going to acclimate your body to it in just the 3 days we expect to be in transit,” Jake took another turn with the extended explanation. “Then we are going to have to push the onboard gravity simulator up to about 1.5 Earth gravities.”

  Then Jess gave Sam a big smile.

  “Now aren't you glad you came buddy?” he asked.

  Sam just groaned.

  Jake was just about to activate the fringe jump sequence when Sam's face appeared on his screen.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Sam's image said. “But how can I listen in on you guys If I select viewer channel zero?”

  “No problem Sam,” Jake replied. “I don't think you've had much chance to read all the instructions yet. For now you could just punch up “zero point four And you'll mostly get our main cockpit view screen, with a small overlay of our mugs in the corner. That way you'll hear us as good as you do right now.”

  “Thanks!” Sam's image said with a smile.

  When Jake finally engaged the fringe effect sequence most of Sam's view screen was filled with an odd looking grayness that seemed to be everywhere. Though from straight ahead there were bright splashes of color, that seamed to splash around them briefly. The color and brightness of the splashes varied so quickly that it was hard to see that the color change always started in the center and spilled all the way to the edge of the screen, even as it was replaced by another color, again streaming from the center. Overlaid on top of this was a line graph with black text. It had a broken line marked ‘baseline’ and another marked ‘actual’. Sam noticed that the �
��actual’ only sometimes matched the ‘baseline’. Gradually the splashes transformed into a spiral swirl of continuous bands of color, that began to look like a big rainbow was wrapped around them.

  “Nicely done Jake,” Jess's image said. “That looks stable enough to get us there. And the numbers say were right on course.”

  “That makes it high time I cranked up the G-force,” Jake's image added.

  “That's it Sam, the hard parts over,” Jake said as he returned to the main cabin with Jess. “I successfully inserted us into a fringe wave headed where we want to go. It's pretty much automatic from here. It'll take about 60 hours to get there. Want to play cards?”

  “No,” Sam said. “Not really but tell me how come this happened so quick. Whenever Steve goes out on a jaunt it usually takes him a couple of days just to get far enough out here to turn on the stardrive?”

  “Well,” said Jake. “That's probably because you need more distance from the sun and a greater exit velocity to safely engage the guild stardrive than you do to begin a fringe effect flight. Though I daresay, if he was in a big enough hurry, he could push his gravitational-optimizer hard enough to get to a safe jump point in about an hour. Right Jess?”

  Jess hesitated for a second.

  “You really don't care about pissing off the guild council by giving away their secrets do you Jake?” he said. “But since you already let that cat out of the bag. Yeah, going by the specs, I'd have said it would take at least two hours. Except that I know for a fact that one time when Steve was in a desperate hurry, he did it in just forty six minutes. Of course I got to spend a week of subjective time rebuilding the primary optimizer before I climbed into my hypersleep chamber.”

  “No Jess, I wouldn't really want to piss them off any more than I have to,” Jake alleged. “Even if I never actually sign up with them. But I don't believe in misinforming my core team members.”

  As Jake said this last part, Sam's mouth sort of fell open.

  “Core team?” Sam sputtered, half a second later. “Me? Do you mean that like the way Steve refers to Jess and Stephanie?”