To Touch the Stars (Founding of the Federation Book 2)

by Chris Hechtl

  “Apparently,” Jamey murmured.

  “As serious as a heart attack it seems,” Charlie said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “The question is, how far are they willing to take their beliefs?”

  “Hopefully, they stop at the nonviolent part,” Levare said. That made Jamey look up in surprise. Levare turned to him and looked into his eyes. “Does it bother you kid to know someone's hoping you'll fail? They are counting on it? Possibly even trying to help you fail?”

  “It's … disconcerting,” Jamey said after a moment of thought. “I think we better make sure we don't,” he said simply.

  “Yeah,” Levare said. “Let's just do that little thing.”

  “And let security do its job. We'll focus on ours. We've got enough to worry about right here,” Charlie said. Levare and Jamey both nodded. “Back to work people,” the older man rumbled.

  “Right,” Levare said. “The field expansion ratio, we need a better handle on it. I got a memo from the coding people, they need to know if there is a way to speed it up or how to handle the steps involved in bringing up the field, and what will happen if something is slow or balks. That tells me they are still having PC issues. Software or hardware, I'm betting it's on their end.”

  “Which means we need to run sims to see what happens if the fields come up uneven. I'm not thrilled about the crunch time involved.”

  “Hell, I'm not thrilled about what it could do to a ship!” Charlie said, shaking his head. “We may need to come up with a coding protocol, hardwired, a safety feature to keep that from happening …”

  Chapter 3

  When Jack Lagroose had first founded his space business, he'd had everything he could do to keep it together and financially solvent. He'd had a lot of haters waiting in the bushes with bats ready to take advantage of any weakness he showed. They'd snap up his company and add it to their own … or tear it apart like a chicken in bankruptcy.

  He'd managed to avoid the shoals of insolvency through luck, determination, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears. When he'd finally caught his first and second big break his mother had come to him in desperation.

  Genetic engineering was on the rocks; the growing public hysteria had chased away companies and investors. She'd been a woman adrift with dreams of a new brighter future but no way to express those dreams. Her son's new found financial wealth had seemed a ready solution.

  Ursilla Lagroose had been the most brilliant woman of her field and at one time won a noble prize for her work fighting viruses. Doctor Lagroose had pitched her son her dream, the one his late father had shared. The one he and several of his family had shared. He'd been moved enough to supply her with a lab, but it had come with a catch, it had been in space. She'd bit the bullet and taken the leap to space. Not without some regret at losing her friends and bridge partners, but the call of her dream had been too strong to deny. Not when she had been so close to making it come true.

  For thousands of years, mankind had imagined animal intelligence through books, art, movies, cartoons, cosplay, and other media forms. They'd examined animal intelligence with fascination, comparing it to mankind's development.

  Some of the media representations had been dark. The Island of Doctor Moreau for instance. Others had more positive forms of entertainment. There had always been an undercurrent of interest to make dogs and other animals smarter. With the Lagroose family it had become acute. Many of the Lagroose family were animal handlers. Most were K-9 police or federal officers who lived with their partners. They respected their partner's intelligence, diligence and physical limits but wistfully wished that they could fix their health issues, improve their intelligence to better do their duty and lengthen their lifetimes.

  Jack's own father had been a K-9 partner who had died in the line of duty so the idea was appealing to him. He'd dreamed the same dream for years before the space bug had lured him away to bigger things. The idea of giving back to the police community, even if they just resolved some of the common health issues was too strong to deny.

  What he hadn't anticipated was the scope of his mother's project or how fast she'd go at it. She had known her time was limited. She'd also spent years planning and plotting out just what she would do given the chance, equipment, and funding. Within a year she'd produced her first litter of modified Shepards. They had remarkable intelligence and had a lot of the health issues addressed. But she'd wanted more. Her son had let her continue.

  Dogs had a limited intelligence. Breeding and social interaction with humans taught them to look to the humans for direction. That was fine with a pet or with a K-9 in most situations, but when you wanted the animal to exercise its own initiative and training … then you had to do something about it. However, she'd hit a wall with the project so she had switched to a related project hoping it would cross pollinate. And it dovetailed neatly with her master plan.

  So, Ursilla had started with the apes. The bioengineering of chimps, bonobos, and gorillas had been her easiest project. Since they think similar to humans and had interacted with humans for years, much was understood about their behavior, minds, and social structure. Each species had also had their genome thoroughly mapped.

  Many captive representatives of each species had been taught sign language from time to time. They also understood human language to some degree. All three species were known to emulate human habits and activities. She hadn't touched their minds, but she had modified their hands to give them opposable thumbs and modified their vocal cords to allow for human speech. But the first generation had been half wild despite limited human social conditioning. Ursilla had insisted they grow up as a troop so they would maintain their own cultural identity. But several physical injuries to technicians and scientists had made her modify that edict. They had to learn to interact with humans on a more … civilized level.

  The first generation of apes, called Neo apes, had taught her a lot. They'd also proven that apes had the mental state of a four-year-old human despite their age. Chimps were inherently violent, which was a problem. She turned her people onto finding ways to improve the apes’ minds.

  They'd succeeded, but only by grafting human brain genes into the mix. They'd enlarged the apes’ forward lobes to improve their intelligence and math skills. They also made minor changes to their spines, legs, and body to allow them to walk upright when they wished.

  Those changes sparked a renewed interest in the Neo dogs. Ursilla added cybernetic implants to allow the animals to be monitored but expanded it to allow them to communicate with their partners … or to control robots. She'd sold a few visiting delegates on the project early on.

  A few of her techs turned their attention to other bioforms without her knowledge. They hadn't quite gone behind her back; she'd been distracted with her health and the various projects under her direction. When she'd found out about the litter of Neo kittens, she'd been ready to strangle her the prodigy who had produced them. But when the kittens had later born fruit by showing new forms of intelligence and a better amount of initiative she'd reluctantly come to accept them.

  Her first stroke had hit when she turned sixty-nine. It had come out of the blue; fortunately it had been diagnosed by the FAST method quick enough to get her medical attention. She hadn't lost a lot of physical ability or cognitive function, but her convalescence had made her take the time to think. She'd polled her people when she'd returned to work then went looking for new blood.

  Gentek's repeated scandals and Biogen's fall and rebirth had served as a warning to them that the dream held hidden dangers. But she wasn't deterred. When her body had begun to betray her, she'd found an able assistant and eventual replacement for herself in Aurelia.

  Aurelia had brought in new fresh eyes to the various projects. She had expanded them to the Neo dolphins and narrowed their focus to make changes to just one bioform to simplify things. Once the changes were proven successful, they would stitch them into other subspecies. Which was one of the reasons they had gone with making ape chan
ges first with the bonobo. And why they had started the dolphin project with the Sotalia fluviatilis or Tucuxi fresh water dolphin. They looked like bottlenose dolphins, but they had a more pronounced hooked beak and were 1.5 meters long, smaller than the common bottlenose. Since they were fresh water animals, they could be adapted to habitats easier.

  Getting the Tucuxi had been tricky. They couldn't take fallow animals from the wild since they were endangered. So, they'd resorted to buying the genetic material from zoos, aquariums, and genetic repositories. Aurelia had managed to adapt artificial uteruses to carry the first generation of near fallow animals to term nineteen years prior.

  It had taken a bit of trial and error to get the uterine replicators to function just right for each species. Not only did they have to replicate the environment within the womb but also exterior stimuli such as movement, heat, heartbeat, different positions, light, sounds, and other things. Ursilla had hit up on the idea of using them to advance the subject's learning and intelligence through conditioning and sound stimuli.

  Once they had a base species though, they resorted to more traditional methods of reproduction. Their numbers had grown ever since. Well, had grown, there had been the occasional death for one reason or another. Even a few homicides.

  Communicating with the fallow generation had been hard. For centuries man had tried to work out how to talk with other species with mixed results. Since each subspecies had their own dialect, it had become even more complicated to the point where the scientists were really just making databases and then arguing about the content.

  They knew that each dolphin used a signature whistle to announce their name and a “here I am.” They found the whistles and signals for fish, after all food was an easy subject to learn. So were some of the tones for moods. Low frequency sounds meant aggression.

  Despite the interaction with humans the fallow generation had been … flawed. Since they hadn't been raised by their own kind they had psychological issues that were still ongoing. There was no separation trauma of course, not from them, but the interactions had impacted their complex social life.

  Dolphins had a sense of cooperation; males formed coalition alliances in the wild. They also had a sense of competition and play. They liked to tap the fins of friends. They also tended to blow air underwater and flick it with their tail to form bubble rings, then play with them until they rose to the surface and popped. It had taken a long time to realize the rings were their form of boredom and attempts to stave off insanity.

  MRI scans in the water while feeding their eyes visual stimuli had allowed them to map their brain that had led to the follow-on steps of brain alteration. Each successive generation went through a battery of tests as they developed and aged. The various advances in genetic engineering and medicine had made their advancement into a fully-fledged tool using human speaking species as nothing short of remarkable.

  The fallow generation had been retired to an L-5 habitat when the pods had been moved to this, their current habitat. They had resented the break up. It had been traumatizing for some, but the later generations of dolphins had understood the need. Besides, they now knew they could still communicate with their great-grandparents through video chats in whistle chatter of primal dolphin.

  Kathy thought about all that as she walked with her usual gait to the habitat. It was a part of her morning routine, breakfast with the dolphins. She arrived just in time she judged as she transitioned through the airlock from gravity to null gravity. She let her body adapt for a moment; that was sometimes tricky with her finicky inner ear and stomach. Once she was sure she wasn't going to have any nausea, she moved out to the viewing platform.

  She always loved coming here; she did it every morning as part of her routine. She looked up and around to see the massive spherical habitat swimming with neo dolphins. Toys were drifting about here and there. Rings and an artificial “reef” maze was below her. Plastic kelp had once been attached down there but had been ripped out as a wasted effort. The plastic just didn't hold up to the dolphins. It also tended to tangle up in knots in the null gravity.

  Work station pods for the dolphins to jack in and receive news or go to work through telepresence were situated in cube farms scattered all around. There were a couple airlocks and viewing platforms other than the one she was on. Above and behind each lock was a massive LCD viewing screen for the dolphins viewing pleasure. Usually they had images of Earth dolphins and oceans playing.

  Lights were hidden in various places along the walls, maze and rings. Not that the dolphins needed it with their sonar ability. There was also a light at the top of the sphere that dangled down like a disco globe. That was their “sun.” By altering its luminance, they created a sense of day and night for the dolphin's circadian rhythms.

  To the uninitiated it was a wild riot of color and chaos. Kathy had been with the dolphins since their inception so it was natural to her. They were in a variety of pink, blue, and gray shades. They were also, as usual arrayed around the feeding lock.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Tik'tik'clock eyed the welcome intrusion of the two leg known as Abrams with amusement. The others chattered about, for they knew that her arrival would begin breakfast and the shift change. He kicked about, then lazily spun as he moved to his chosen spot within the pods. Others moved aside or were brushed aside in his passing.

  “Feeding time! Come and get it!” A female two-leg technician yelled with a gravelly voice as she pressed a button. The tech released fish into the habitat from her. They came through the chute with a puff of air forming a loose bait ball. The fish floated about but gasped for water. The humidity wasn't enough for their gills to function properly. They flopped about in the null gravity, bumping into each other as well as the walls, deck, and ceiling.

  The pods let the ball of fish expand outward; it was better that way. “No fun.”

  “?”

  “No hunt. No fun,” Tik'tik'clock replied, sounding annoyed. He picked up a fish and played with it. He had trouble with speaking and understanding two-leg words.

  “Yes,” Kaku replied in agreement. “No fair.” He was one of the first dolphins to have a human name. He had been named after a famous physicist … one who had been long dead and whose last name a dolphin could easily pronounce.

  “Who cares!” Squee'clock'ch'tk replied snatching the fish from Tik'tik'clock in passing. He clacked at her in annoyance and then went and got another from the ball of dying fish.

  “Better than block,” Kal'nik reminded them. That was true Tik'tik'clock thought. It was better than the blocks of fish paste the two legs created and fed them when the fish weren't ready.

  Tik'tik'clock was annoyed at his life. He wanted more. He wanted to explore, but the two legs hemmed them in. Kaku nudged a fish with his melon to another female, Click'ck'a, who he wanted to mate with. She was a fine specimen from his generation, younger than he was, and just entering puberty. However, she saw right through his ploy and flicked it with her fluke to a younger female. The younger female caught it, played with it with her flipper fingers. She rolled in the air but didn't watch where she was going, so intent on her fingers and catch. She flew through the ball and her thrashing as he realized where she'd gone ended up scattering fish in every direction.

  “Now better!” Tik'tik'clock said, moving in as if he was hunting. He clicked and chattered rapid fire warning the pinkish Kal'nik off. The lower caste male swerved off at the last second for another fish. There was plenty to go around after all. Tik'tik'clock was far bigger and older; he had some scars from battles. A few from the teeth of mates who'd raked him after a successful coupling. Dolphin sex was still practically rape, harkening back to their wild ancestry. They'd only just found out that the sex didn't create a baby. Instead the two legs inserted the baby with their intrusive probes and needles. The pods were still coming to grips with such invasions.

  Within the pods was a well-hidden undercurrent of resentment over changes humanity had thrust unasked
upon them. The tinkering bothered a few of the pod. They also resented how they were treated, not as people but as either something to be studied and admired or as children. Wanted to bite healer Lagroose lady for her condescending attitude.

  Tik'tik'clock blatted a raspberry as a floundering fish hit him close to his eye. Instinctively the eye closed and he moved his head away in a flick. The head came back; this time relying on his sonar. He pulsed a sharp stunning pulse of sound at the fish, freezing it; then he snatched it up and tore it into small pieces.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Kaku picked a fish out, snapped it in half, then daintily bolted the half with the head down. He nudged the tail half into a spin and watched it for a moment, marveling at his distraction. He wondered if the two-legs were watching and recording it. He hoped so. He hoped his cleverness would somehow show and proven him worthy. He wanted to be on a colony ship. He wasn't sure what it was, but he liked the idea of getting out of the lab.

  Going to the stars was confusing to them Kaku thought. They barely understood or believed that they were in a box in the sky! Humans had tried to explain the concepts, they'd shown them pictures, but it didn't make sense. They'd even shown Tw'tw'ch'ka and others what they called a window but that only confused the pod even more. Humans had shown them the vision walls; they could make the walls show things, even lies. So how could they believe their own eyes? And their other senses made even less sense to them.

  But the lure of seas, of seeing new things not the closed confines of the labs and their habitat was very appealing to many of the pods. Unfortunately, only a few could go; just one pod the two-legs said. Competition was becoming fierce to be in that pod. Some were ready to go to war to prove themselves so they could go. The pod leaders warned them with sharp looks and warnings not to resort to violence to bully their way into the project. The humans would think they weren't ready. Kal'nik had bruises under his blubber from such rebuttals. He didn't care; he wanted to go. He wanted to do. They all did.