Stepping Stones (Founding of the Federation Short Stories Book 1)

by Chris Hechtl

  The real reason they had to go home wasn't the lack of supplies, Lagroose had actually gone over 5 percent on some of his payload. He had been surprised by the other man's generosity so he'd returned the favor by sending him rocks that were bigger too. No, the real reason they'd returned home was the near mutiny his crew and Paul's had started. They had been tired of it and ready to get out.

  When they made orbit, he grinned for the camera's benefit as he stood with them one last time in their trademark circle. “Well, we did it. We survived. We didn't make everyone a billionaire, but there is always next time. We learned from the experience,” Todd said in the final interview of the show. “Most people don't realize that the first year is the hardest. It's not all that easy; we've proven that. But we've also proven that we can do it. If we put our heads together, our hearts and our hands into it, we can achieve anything we set out as a goal. We've moved mountains, in this case literally. I for one am looking forward to doing it again.”

  After all the creditors had been paid, his investors had barely broken even and his crew had been paid. Not what they were worth, not by a long shot, but they hadn't gone home empty handed. He'd been genuinely afraid that might happen. They'd also shown that it could get it done. That he could do it, which was why he already had investors lining up for the second bite. Next time he'd go out with more money, which meant more resources. And next time they wouldn't go out to stay just a couple of months. He wanted to stay longer, possibly stay as long as the Schnauvels if he could afford it.

  => O

  Paul sighed wearily when they finished. “Cut, wrap. That's a wrap, folks. Well done. Time to hit the ground and find a bar and some beer,” he said. His crew grinned and saluted him jauntily.

  “Guinness for me,” one of the Brits in their midst said.

  “Me too. I'll share a pint.”

  “Hell, get your own mate. I'm not sharing,” the Brit said with a laugh. Brandy smiled and winked at Paul. Paul was looking forward to other relief forms. He'd spent nine long months with his wife and had remained virtually celibate the entire time. He was looking forward to a hotel room and some much deserved quiet time. He was pretty sure she was too. Their marriage had survived.

  The studio had emailed him. Robert and Phil had been happy with the results. The ratings were solid; they already had next season’s sponsors and had lined up contracts for two more teams, these to follow the Schnauvels and others around. The competition would make things lively.

  Another studio aligned with their network was fishing for a show with the dredge group. After being cooped up in the can with so many warm bodies for nine months, he wished them all the luck in the world with that venture.

  He'd done his business; they would find another director. If they were going to expand, he planned to be the producer, or hell, executive producer. He'd earned it.

  => O

  Jack grinned as he looked at the shares in his portfolio one Earth year after arriving on Mars. He was due to return to Earth in three months, hopefully in time for his mother's next birthday if he scheduled it right. It would be a nice surprise he mused happily, imagining her expression when he snuck up on her.

  He had been right to hedge his bets with 360, but he'd forgotten to sell that share in the television production studio. It had let him keep tabs on them from that end, however. It had also let him see that the show had been a success. So much so that they'd paid Houffman and even authorized a second show. The public had been enthused by the project, but that had been dampened by the realism of what they'd undertaken. They had garnered slight sympathetic feelings for the drama and grunge work but not over all of the dumb mistakes made or some of the cornball Gipper speeches the Houffmans had pulled. But it had worked out in the end. His payment was in the pipeline. He had catchers waiting to catch them too.

  The show made a big deal about the dangers and such, and the low profit margin. They didn't mention that he was making five times what he'd initially charged Todd Houffman ... that was if the rocks were successfully caught. Axial Corporation were salivating over getting them. Todd's off-the-cuff idea to spot weld pieces of nickel iron to form a rough cage or shell had worked out pretty well too. Parker Schnauvel hadn't wanted to admit where he'd gotten the idea from, but he'd fessed up when the show played the bit where Todd pitched the idea.

  Axial was finally on track, and with that their shares were growing. They'd already sold 90 percent of the real estate in Axial 1 and it hadn't been completed yet. The material he was sending would accelerate their construction rate by 10 percent. His other ideas he'd passed on through Luigi had added another 2 percent to that.

  The corporation hadn't had the money to pay him up front so they'd paid him in shares as well as a small plot of land within Axial 2. There was so much rock they would have nearly twice what they'd gotten in their project's entire short history all delivered in three deliveries spaced a week apart. They were contracting him for another set of deliveries in six months, which he had subcontracted out to Schnauvel in trade. If they weren't careful, he'd end up owning them before their project was finished.

  The final delivery from 360 mining was set for Mars. He would take charge of that personally and feed it to the orbital smelter he had. That way he could use it to make more things. Equipment the Schnauvels and others were already putting in orders for as barter for their contract.

  Things were looking up. He was even exploring subcontracting work for Axial Corporation's real estate customers. Many had grand plans to build homes or estates within the colony. None had thought of how they would get the material to the L-5 position, however, or who would put it together. Axial's planning commission had spun grand plans like Todd Houffman was becoming famous for but had been a bit vague on the details.

  Some of the real estate was already changing hands. Some major developers were starting to make plays, buying up swatches of land and then applying to the planning commission to change their intended purpose from individual estates to apartments or commercial buildings. That was going to get interesting when the exterior hull neared completion. He liked the idea of the resorts, skiing in space? Fishing of course, the theme park ... and his sense of whimsy was tickled by the article about the billionaire who was holding out for his castle in space. He hoped the old man lived long enough to see his dream come to fruition.

  He made a side note to look into what they were planning to do about the atmosphere within the interior. Did they plan on getting it from the moon? That would be prohibitively expensive, shipping liquid oxygen up wasn't cheap. No, the belt was the way to go. He nodded and wrote himself a note to explore sending chunks of ice down the road. For a premium price of course.

  He'd found he could work in space, but it made more sense to pay someone else to do the dirty work and allow him to focus on the bigger picture. Onward and upward indeed.

  The show had also gotten more interest in orbital mining, and in the belt. Already an outfit was coming together to set up Ceres as a port of call. Luigi's daughter, Irena, had expressed an interest in it. It remained to be seen if she actually followed through with her plan to go there. Betsy hadn't been thrilled about the girl's promise to expand the family's horizons, but from what Jack had learned, she had no choice.

  More and more people were trying to get up into space. Some were failing, but others succeeded. The studio had been sued by a few people, most of it nuisance lawsuits. One had been from a widow of a guy who had been inspired by the show and had tried and failed to get into orbit. She was trying to earn the sympathy vote to squeeze money out of the studio to make her go away. Jack hoped it failed utterly. He hated and despised people who pulled stunts like that.

  He snorted at himself as he adjusted his thoughts to other patterns. He wondered if Todd understood that he, Jack Lagroose was liable to make ten times as much as he Todd Houffman had made for his little venture? And he'd done it from Mars? Sure he'd risked his neck getting the package together, but he'd worked smarter, not
harder. He planned to continue that meme wherever and whenever possible.

  A Russian cosmonaut crew were already on board Lagroose-1. They were all veterans of the old ISS and eager to be in space. The fact that they would be up there doing more than science projects appealed to them greatly.

  He'd bought up a couple tons of used equipment left in orbit and picked up another couple hundred tons of used Russian equipment on the ground. He'd also picked up a contract to scoop up defunct satellites from a conglomerate of telecommunications companies worried about their orbital investments. They wanted him to bump the debris into the atmosphere to burn up. He had other ideas, like stripping them then selling the remains to the orbital smelters while selling the parts to repair other platforms. If the contracts worked out half as well as he expected, his station would turn into a junkyard. Jack's Junkyard, he thought with a humorous twist of his lips.

  The 360 Mining outfit had gotten back to Earth long before his rocks were destined to arrive. That was fine; he could and did track them daily with their automated radio beacons. More importantly, through Todd and Paul he'd made a contact with John and Parker Schnauvel. John had returned to Earth to get medical attention on his own boat, but Parker had initiated a contract with Lagroose Industries in order to send them rocks in exchange for parts and equipment. The equipment would be needed to update their aging equipment. He wouldn't ship rare mineral rocks but pieces of iron and other materials his grandfather had stockpiled or sent off in his tailings. Parker was still chasing a big payday, but he understood the need for building infrastructure and taking the long view.

  The young man Parker was changing the company's business model. He had talked with his father and brother, and they were now looking diversifying the family business by moving rocks. Jack smiled slightly. He was in the process of negotiating a tug deal with them, a kicker tug and a catcher tug in exchange for ten thousand tons of raw ore.

  They would learn during the process, but they already had years of knowledge to draw on. If they pulled it off, well, good things would inevitably happen. Things he could and would build off of. The pace was picking up, thing were looking up he thought as he looked up to the stars once more.

  The End

  Aphrodite

  2088

  “Ladies and gentlemen. We have a guest speaker as some of you have undoubtedly noticed,” Professor Wilks said, nodding to the A.I. “We try to pepper this class with as much realism as we can. Which includes A.I., which this class is about,” the professor said with a sincere smile.

  “Introduction to the history of Artificial Intelligence goes beyond the events of the First A.I. War and delves deeper into how the A.I. came about and what their motivations were,” the professor said. “I yield the floor to you, Commander,” he stated with a slight bow in the avatar's direction.

  “My thanks, Professor,” she replied as the audience clapped. She smiled or at least her bluish holographic image did. She didn't care for the camera set up in the Antigua Prime College, but she'd make it work.

  “You've done this how many times before?” Mnemosyne asked her in a text message.

  “A few. More often in Pyrax before we left I admit. I've been too busy to do the lecture circuit here,” Commander Sprite admitted.

  “You did it when you were here before,” Clio told her. “And they still play your canned material. Yours and Admiral Irons.”

  “True. But that was then. This is now. We have a new crop of students. Admittedly most are meat bags, but they need to know this. Doing it live helps to drive some of the lessons home with them.”

  “Right. Need to know. I happen to know what you are going to discuss,” Clio drawled.

  “Do you? Sometimes I wonder if we remember our own history as well as we think we do.”

  “Oh?”

  “Just listen,” Sprite stated as the professor bowed and motioned to her that she had the floor. Her avatar nodded politely back.

  “Thank you, class,” she said as the applause died down. “Some of you know some of the events that unfolded, so I'm not going to touch them. I had briefly considered a story on Loki or Puck, but Admiral Irons told me that was hitting a bit too close to home,” she said with a grin. “I noted some of you asked about why A.I. need to sleep. So, I thought I'd tell you about one of the precursors to the A.I. you know. Her name is Aphrodite. This is her story.”

  <*>^<*>

  Andy Traynor was a happy man, but damn nervous about the next half hour. He had that time to win over a very hard audience, his boss, and the board.

  He hadn't wanted to work for ... well, he had to face it, and the sex industry wasn't his first choice of employment or his second. In fact, it was very far down the list. But he'd been desperate.

  He'd graduated with a master's degree, top of his class in robotics at UCR expectant to find a job waiting for him in a theme park, manufacturing, or in movies. He'd limited himself to cutting edge stuff, animatronics as well, which had been his downfall. While he'd been drooling over starting at the top, the rest of his class had taken the low hanging fruit. Once he'd run low on funds, he'd been locked out and dreading finding a job at a KFC or Subway.

  Then he'd gotten a call. Apparently one of his advisors had uploaded his resume to the net, and someone had taken an interest. Someone in Vegas, which was convenient for him. Traveling there only took four hours, and he had been hired in the parking lot. He'd thought it was a start-up for a theme park or hotel with animatronics. Instead it'd been something else.

  He'd languished in the basement of the company for a while, mainly working on fixing things while doodling on his computer in CAD. One of his bosses had seen the robot design and had taken an interest. He'd gotten interest from special deep pocket clients and had yet to find a way to fill their wish list. Andy had what he'd been looking for.

  A week later Andy had a warehouse of electronic and manufacturing equipment, 3-D printers, servers, the works. He'd also been expected to deliver. That had been a year ago. Now it was time for an update to the bosses who paid him to live his life's dream.

  Well, not quite what he had imagined but close. A gynoid instead of an android, but he knew he could replicate the work for either gender or androgynous if needed later. A gynoid was a robot ... a female android designed to emulate a woman the user described. That could be physical attributes as well as behavior.

  He'd done his homework; there had been attempts over the years. The idea wasn't new; it had existed in science fiction for decades. The best known attempt was Roxxy, but it had disappeared without any media splash.

  Under his guidance the company had bought into the Lagroose cyborg designs plus they had downloaded open source files to create a customizable robot body. It hadn't been all plug and play, but it had gotten them started. The first time his creation had moved had been wild. The first time she had walked ... he had a lot of firsts. He realized in some ways he was a proud parent.

  The body was only half of the equation. They wanted the gynoid to be more intuitive, learning, and more empathic with its partner, not a passive sex object. From the beginning his plan had been to use first open source files as a template, neural networks for behaviors ... but then evolve them as needed, replacing files and structures with better ones ... a learning process for both creator and machine. More machine though, since it would need to be able to do the tasks and he couldn't operate it remotely. Just doing it once had given him the willies.

  No, now they had designed the software ... the brain to use genetic and recursive algorithms to allow the computer to learn. But there was so much to learn! He had to set up a system through trial and error in order for the computer network to remain functional. It would store data it needed to process in depth for later downtime analysis. Sleep essentially.

  It would sleep in order to process what it learned. But sleep was a part of his problem, just one of many he still had to solve.

  <*>^<*>

  Aphrodite watched the presentation with
what some would consider curiosity. She knew it was about her, but she didn't understand the motivations involved. It wasn't sexual, which meant it was safe to ignore. But her creator had commanded her to watch the video feed in order to better learn and understand user social cues and tone of voice. So she did as instructed.

  She had dutifully studied user emotional states. Her programming was geared to bring out arousal in her user. By periodically checking the thermal profile of the user, she could judge their emotional state against a statistical chart she had in her memory. High temperatures in specific areas like the genitals meant arousal. Temperature shifts or cold zones meant other states. Cold zones like blue in limbs were contrary to the emotional state she was programmed to bring out in a user.

  Her understanding of user thermal profiles had been geared in a specific way, but she had found anomalies in some of the users who came to view or field test her. The need to understand such things drove her to explore and widen the database. Emotional states in users were varied, and sometimes hard to predict. They were also mixed many times, which threw her calculations off until she factored in other behavioral queues.

  Surprise was normal, as was happiness, pride, and arousal. Some were indicative of anxiety, disgust, or even fear though, and she had yet found out why. Or how to change it through conscious changes to her behavior.

  Unfortunately, the video feed didn't contain a thermal feed so her sensor sample was incomplete. She could attempt to generate a thermal profile based on observed behavior, tone of voice, and social interaction. A second processor was tasked with finding a way to alter the light image to an infrared image if possible to run a sample comparison.