Black Shift (The Consilience War Book 1)

by Ben Sheffield

  Finally, there was a rumbling groan, then the tunnel sagged and collapsed. Zandra mentally cheered as more than a score of spidermechas were buried under tons of rocks.

  But it didn’t matter. More holes would be dug.

  Mykor had made an enemy of someone who could bury him in manpower. No matter how many casualties they inflicted on the enemy, there would always be more.

  Mission Interruptus 4

  The universe is predicated on a single rule: limited amounts of energy.

  Energy is such a vague and scary word, but underpinning it is something even vaguer and scarier. It’s extended definition is the ability to create complexity.

  Literally anything in the universe more elaborate than the basic building blocks of subatomic particles is complex, and as such, is a deviation from the norm, living on borrowed time. A buckminsterfullerene grid only exists because of energetic bonds in a carbon atom. As these energetic bonds break down, the complexity will cease to be. On a larger scale, planetary orbits exist at the forbearance of gravitation deformations in the spacetime curve. All of this uses energy. We think of waste when we overuse a limited resource such as oil and uranium-235, but in truth, this dynamic plays out at every level of cosmology. Even a planet orbiting its star is using energy for its gravitation bonds. Limited, and unsustainable.

  When we run out of energy, we run out of complexity.

  What this means is that gradually there will be fewer ones and negative ones, even fewer twos and negative twos, still fewer threes and negative threes (et cetera), and more and more zeroes. The state of the universe is to decay into an undifferentiated muck.

  Have you ever thought that you might be a example of such transient complexity?

  Much ink has been spilled about “Boltzmann brains”, and how they are a natural consequence of an infinite multiverse. Such a brain is a short-lived pocket of complexity, brought together by random chance, that exists for a fraction of a moment and then disappears. This brain might think itself to be human. It might imagine itself to have a life, to have dreams. But in the end it was just a momentary aberration, a strange ripple of complexity in the widening stream of universal entropy.

  If there are infinite universes, then there are infinite Boltzmann brains. Based on this logic, you are very likely a Boltzmann brain at this instance. If so, you exist by chance and will cease to exist as soon as you blink your eyes.

  Why have I gone so deep into the weeds? Because it seems to me that space travel as a contradiction at its heart, a Persian flaw. Mankind started its space programs in the 20th century with rhapsodies of immortality: if God wouldn’t grand us eternal life, we would climb to some cosmic Elysium and wrest it from him ourselves. We would spread our species and phylum across the galaxies and all of its stars We would prevail. We would conquer. We would become a cross-galactic species that would live forever on a billion billion worlds.

  But this immortality meant we had to die. Meant we had to confront our own complexity, and its existence in a universe that demands simplicity.

  Space is intractably huge, even now. Our furthest colony in Alpha Centauri, the venerable Konotouri station, exists more than four years away at 99.99% of c. A few exploratory ships have journeyed even farther afield, but none have been heard of ever again. Perhaps they’re thriving. Perhaps they’re dying. Perhaps they never arrived, killed by some errant space rock.

  We might never know. The speed of light imposes a hard barrier on all our communications.

  Anyone who goes into space is sacrificing his life on the altar of humankind’s immortality. Fucking for chastity.

  But it gets worse. Rather than have people wait for years or decades, conscious and twiddling their thumbs, the Black Shift corporation found a way to conserve energy and resources by freeze-drying humans, and reconstituting them at the other end.

  But you already know the results of this. Blanked out memories. They have to be restored at the other end, with memory chips. But imagine waking up from such a sleep, on a distant world. What reason would you have to suspect that the memory chip had any connection to your previous life at all?

  Platonic philosophy suggests everything in the real world is just a reflection of some ideal form in a perfect world. This dented chair I sit in is modelled after a perfect chair in heaven, which has no dent. I am a pale and fat human, modelled after a perfectly tanned and fit human in heaven, and so forth.

  At some point (around the time when we discovered atoms), we started wondering if this was really correct. If chair is a representation of some perfect chair form, what if I smash it into firewood? At one point does its constitutional chairness become a constitutional firewoodness? Suppose I half smash it, so that it can sort of be sat on and sort of be burned for heat? What then?

  From there on, we abandoned the idea that anything has a true nature. Chairs are a certain grouping of atoms. And I am a certain grouping of atoms. The world isn’t atoms, all the way down. It’s atoms, and there is no up.

  Neuroscience has always languished behind the physical sciences somewhat, perhaps because it’s so difficult for errors to be caught and corrected. But the philosophers of the mind have been remarkably tardy in applying the same lesson to a brain. When I say “me”, none of the parts in my brain really are “me”. Not my hippocampus, not my amygdala, not my corpus callosum. The “me” is an illusion. We might choose to identify the collection of my brain parts as something more, but we should know that it is a trick. Put a stick in water and enjoy the effect of it bending, but please do not think that any of the stick’s molecules have moved even a nanometer.

  We thought we were being merciful, sparing our spacefarers countless years of life in a tin can, eating MREs. Unfortunately, the Black Space program has thrown wide open the furnace of Cartesianism – take away a man’s memories, and you have forever broken the man. Even if you give him his memories back!

  A man cannot be taken apart, and reassembled at a later date. Doing this breaks the man, and at best all you can do is create a new man that’s similar to the old one. If his memories are destroyed, even that goal is unattainable.

  My prediction for the future is that we’ll see a culture of depressed, suicidal astronauts. Though they might have been sane and healthy when they signed up for the Black Shift program (though I have my doubts), they surely won’t be on the other side.

  It’s true that the reader of the book could be a Boltzmann brain, and not the person he believes himself to be. But Boltzmann brains exists by randomness, higher levels of complexity gradually emerging and stacking in such a way that you, the reader appear.

  But how about creating a Boltzmann brain? Taking something that was once permanent and turning it into something with a memory measured in the woosh of sliding space doors? Anyone who sends a man into space is a sadist. And that’s no joke.

  [The Black Shift Project, by Emil Gokla, 2100 edition. Rights resolve with the Black Shift Archives.]

  Konotouri Delta – March 18, 2136 - 1400 hours

  Gas cloaked their vision. He looked across the room at Ubra, and she was a frail figure, standing out as a verticle line in the swampy sea.

  “The filtration systems in the helmets are designed for brief encounters.” Ubra said. “They’re ‘get in, get out, get your ass to an eye-washing station’ affairs. And these oxygen tanks have an hour in them, tops.’”

  “Shit, a whole hour.” He said. “Aren’t we spoiled for time. Listen, do we have any Kevlar ziplines?”

  Crawling amidst the clouds, she found a field kit and groped around in it. “Yep. You’ve got a plan?”

  “Secure yourself by the waist to a solid object. Things are about to get windy.”

  She was about to ask why, then she saw him securing a thermite charge at the far wall of the prison.

  Beyond, separated by about a foot of fragile fuselage, was space.

  “Oh, no.”

  “If we’re going out, we’re going out on my terms.”

 
“There’s got to be another way.” She said, suddenly terrified. “Look, can we try to negotiate with them? I’m sure we can do…something.”

  “Can’t shovel shit back into a horse’s ass, Ubra. There’s not a single chance we’ll fight our way out of this.” He said, threading the Kevlar line into his belt, and securing it in a tight hitch around a metal support pole. “Count of three, then I blow out this wall.”

  She tied herself to retention pole with anxious, antsy fingers.

  “Three.”

  She went too fast.

  “Two.”

  She made mistakes with her ropes.

  “One.”

  She knotted herself in. In the world of fog that the prison had become, the secure anchor to the wall was strangely comforting.

  “Boom.” Andrei said, and activated the detonator through his nanomesh suit.

  The explosion wasn’t red. There wasn’t enough oxygen left to fuel a fire. There was a dullish yellow burst, anticlimactic in itself, and then the entire wall of the station was blown away.

  A huge panel of fuselage was sucked out in one piece, as if it was being pulled by elastic bands. Ubra and Andrei found themselves momentarily staring into space.

  A field of stars, obscured by a large circular moon of glossy black. The hugeness and vastness of the cosmos crashed into the space in their psyches wiped clean by the explosion. How have we lived in this place? How have we not gone mad? How could we have forgotten that outside a fragile metal shell, a few inches deep, that there was…this?

  They only had about half a second for such thoughts. Then the prison depressurized.

  Outer space seemed to howl. The thick, poison-saturated air whooshed past them like chemically laden breath. Both Ubra and Andrei were yanked off their feet by the vacuum. The Kevlar line that had seemed so solid and secure seconds ago now seemed as thin and fragile as a spiderthread as they were suspended horizontally against the sucking force.

  Everything not bolted down vanished out into the emptiness outside. Ubra and Andrei clung on to the Kevlar lines, their masked faces to the rushing air as countless objects flew past them. Weapons. Supplies. A crate of pressurized water whipped past Ubra’s face and then burst, a tiny plastic bag releasing twenty gallons in a watery explosion. Sabrok’s plasma knife spun past, swapping one end for another, nearly embedding itself in Andrei’s neck.

  Five seconds. Ten seconds. Still the wind blew, dangling their lives on a Kevlar thread. Space was a sucking mouth, and the stars were teeth. All they could do was cling on.

  “What do we do now?” Despite the roar of the wind, the microphone picked up her diaphragm movements, and transmitted it to his helmet.

  He didn’t know.

  Hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  Surely Konotouri Station had procedures in place for something like this. For small bullet holes, polygel would clot over the hole, sealing it from the elements until more permanent repairs could be effected. He doubted that a blast hole from a thermite charge would be covered by that action plan.

  Do they seal the station off? Is there a ship that repair the wall from the outside? A ship that maybe we can steal?

  The whooshing sound grew less and less, a low and mournful howl into space instead of a deafening one. By now, most of the air had left the prison, and would be coming from upstairs. They clung on like grim death, terrified of their Kevlar anchor lines failing.

  And getting sucked out into that.

  Upstairs, Sabrok and the five security guards had their masks on. A thin layer of poison gas was floating upstairs.

  Konotouri-Delta would have to be pumped and air-cycled. It would be unenterable for days, or perhaps week.

  I’m not doing security, I’m doing pest extermination, he thought, imagining the prisoners gasping downstairs, imagining them dying.

  When the explosion went off downstairs, he raised an eyebrow.

  Then there was an enormous sucking sensation that yanked him forward like an undertow, down the stairs. Air whistled past his head.

  He screamed behind the gas mask. All of his men were screaming. Then they were falling downstairs, tumbling like ragdolls as the riptide of escaping air pulled them down.

  “What the fuck!” A lieutenant shouted.

  “They’ve opened a hole in the ship!” He shouted. “Hang on to something!”

  He gripped the metal siderail, and was able to slow his downward slide. A man behind him crashed into him, nearly dislodging him. A boot cracked down on his temple.

  Then he heard a voice over his intercom.

  “Security Chief Sabrok, systems have detected a breach in the containment wall of the prison. Air pressure is dropping rapidly.”

  Dispassionate and emotionless. He knew the voice, but not the name.

  “As Deputy Warrant Officer of the station, I am making an executive decision. You have a full minute to get to the elevator with your men, after which time we will enact emergency containment measures.”

  Jesus, he thought over the howl of the wind. I don’t even know the guy who’s commanding the station any more.

  “Emergency contain my fist in your ass!” He roared. “They blew open the wall! We’re all getting sucked out! Fucking do something, you idiot!”

  “Your feelings are noted.”

  The comlink ended, leaving Sabrok steadily sliding down the stairs, swearing profusely.

  Some of his men had already lost their footing and had disappeared through the doorway. None were successful in going further up the stairs, or in the direction of the elevator. The suction was too strong.

  He knew what Konotouri protocol here was.

  Each of the habitat wheels was detachable, so that depressurisation only affected part of the station instead of all of it. At any moment, one of the four wheels could be unmoored from the superstructure, and dropped to the planet.

  That fucking bastard. He’ll probably just write off me and my whole team as casualties of war.

  He heard shooting from the level below. Lots of shooting.

  Fuck it. Fuck it all. They’re not even dead yet.

  Then he lost control and went spinning like a windblown leave down the stairs, through the door, and into the prison.

  One thing at a time. Andrei thought, hanging perfectly horizontally from the pole. Stay alive.

  Screaming guards were tumbling down the stairs.

  One clutched the edge of the stairwell, and was able to steady himself for a few seconds. The second slammed to the ground, rebounded back into the air, and flew straight at Andrei’s face.

  He felt bone-deep panic as the man tackled him, hands wrapped around his waist. The belt that held his Kevlar line sagged.

  The guard was berserk. Clawing at him. He tried to throw the guy off. Failed.

  “Ubra, do something!” He yelled.

  There was a staccato gunshot, and a jolt ran through the man. He stiffened, and his grip relaxed. Andrei was able to sling him over his shoulder, twist 180 degrees, and body-throw him out into the sucking void.

  Hanging from the wall like a gravity-defying rock climber, Ubra gave him a thumbs up.

  The second guard steadied himself, his legs hooked on a porthole on the ground. He snarled, and aimed a gun at Ubra.

  “Just try it.” She said.

  He pulled the trigger, and his shot spanged uselessly off the metal pole, well above her head.

  The gunshot, like all actions, exerted an equal and opposite reaction. With no Kevlar line to steady him, the recoil hurled him off his feet, through the hole in the wall. They both caught a glimpse of his terrified face as he vanished out into space.

  “I lost my gun when I shot that fucker.” Ubra yelled. “There’s more coming. Ball’s in your court.”

  “Just a moment.”

  Andrei gripped his line, and with great effort pulled himself back to the metal shaft running through the center of the prison. Like a pole dancer practicing his act, he looped a leg around it, and swung his body ar
ound so that the wind was blowing him directly into the pole, pinning him against it.

  Then he drew his pistol, and settled back with the sight aimed straight at the doorway.

  The first guard to tumble through the doorway took a bullet to the head.

  The second guard was shot twice in the shoulder. The impact from the bullets knocked him to the ground, and he slid towards the hole before grabbing one of the Repulsors, and clinging like a limpet.

  Three more bodies came down the rumbling stairway, crashing awkwardly in a heap before hurtling towards the hole. Andrei fired into them, not knowing if he hit anyone. One of them whammed into him, knocking the wind from his lungs, before soaring out into space. As he was recovering from that, a booted foot struck him in the head. As the final body flew past him into the great unknown, his gun was torn from his hand by a clawing hand.

  Shit. He thought.

  Now neither of them had a weapon.

  “Watch out! Your left!” Ubra called.

  The last remaining guard, clinging to the Repulsor, raised his head. Underneath a caked-on mess of blood, he recognised the features of Sabrok. The captain of the guard, and one his first acquaintances upon arriving at Konotouri.

  The oafish captain saw that both of them were defenceless, and raised his hand.

  It had a knife in it.

  Andrei couldn’t hear him talk over the deafening roar of the wind, but he could lip-read the man.

  Hello, Commander Wake.

  Sabrok spring-launched himself at Andrei, and dealt him a savage slash with the knife. Andrei blocked it with his armored cuff, but then Sabrok was on him, their bodies pressed together, the knife seeking and thrusting like a serpent’s fang.

  Andrei couldn’t see. The bigger man’s huge open palm was covering the visor of his helmet. The blade ripped a small gash in his armor, piercing the skin.

  Andrei pulled the man’s palm off his face, just in time to see the tip of the knife rushing towards the bridge of his nose.