Nodal Convergence (Cretaceous Station Book 1)

by Terrence Zavecz

  ‘The Late Cretaceous world below us shows the results of the breakup of the single supercontinent of Pangaea that started approximately a hundred million years ago. Even from here, you can see that there is a lot of volcanic activity; you can see it at these three spots and particularly over here where some of the younger Rocky Mountains are still forming.’

  ‘Notice that water extends from what will be our Gulf of Mexico, through Texas right up the mid-continent region of North America and into most of Canada. Sea levels are about 200 meters higher than on our Earth. A northern seaway has flooded in from the Arctic Ocean and a southern seaway, flooding north from the Gulf of Mexico, has nearly joined it. Over here, Greenland remains joined to North America, though a set of parallel, raised "welts" - a rift valley, much like our East African Rift - indicates that Greenland will soon break away.’

  ‘Down here, the South Atlantic Ocean is much narrower, and notice that Brazil and West Africa are joined by a tenuous land bridge. Over to the lower right of the globe we find India still attached to Madagascar. Africa, like much of Europe and North America is flooded.’

  ‘OK, so much for the land masses. Now look at the colors of the globe. Notice anything different? Ah, it’s easy to miss the obvious. Where are the ice masses at the poles? There are none! Look at how much of the land is covered with lush green vegetation.’

  ‘The world before you has been slowly cooling for the last 100 million years. The Late Cretaceous period is a time of global warmth and stability with equatorial temperatures similar to the Earth with which we are familiar. We should find the climate quite comfortable although a little warmer. Tropical vegetation extends all the way to 50 degrees north and south of the equator. That would be right up into lower Canada or southern Germany back on our world. We should be quite comfortable here with few major storms like our hurricanes.’

  ‘A word of caution to all of you when we go down there. In spite of all the Vids you may have seen, there is a lot we don’t know about the flora and the fauna; that’s “plants and animals” for the kids that may not recall this from their studies. The upcoming K-T event will kill almost all of the dinosaurs, except for Tweety Bird and his friends. The event will be even more far-reaching in that it will remove over 75% of the all species from the later fossil record. There will be a lot of bugs, mammals, fish and the good Lord knows what else down there that we never expected or currently know of.’

  ‘Plants are going to look both familiar and alien. We will see trees like beech, fig, magnolia, and sassafras. Willow, elm, grape, laurel, birch, oak, and maple also make their appearance, along with grass and, one of my favorites, the giant sequoias. If you see something unfamiliar then assume it is dangerous.’

  ‘Last of all remember this is the time of the big dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex.’ Looking directly at Adrian, ‘This means we will find big ones on land, in the water and even in the air. We cannot assume easy flying and will have to be on the lookout for large obstacles. Pterosaurs are highly evolved flying animals during this period. We aren’t sure of their means of flying or gliding but we do know they can be found with a wingspan of 40 feet or more.’

  ‘There’s a lot we will learn here. We will need to learn it if we are to be successful and even survive. Since pure science is not the stated objective of this expedition, any work I do beyond base security needs will be on my own time. I would sure appreciate the help of any interested volunteers so that we can learn as much as possible. Thank you.’

  Three decks below Sara, sixteen-year-old John Wenford sat behind an engineering console. John loved robotics and this was so much better than the dumb excavation ‘bots his mother Sara had at the dig. These were even more fun than his dad’s android work. A tight sparkling cloud of almost mosquito-sized points rolled and spun in the air before his head. A rainbow of colors reflected from the cloud as it oscillated from a translucent sphere through complex three-dimensional Lissajous curves of simple donut to complex interlocking pretzel and woven geometric patterns. Musical to almost vocal quality sounds played throughout the pattern. The cloud wove and danced into tight and then loose patterns to then split in mid-flight and form two balls that extruded into a single, shining snake-like pattern finally settling down to rest on the desk top.

  A girl with a short boyish cut of sand colored hair entered the room behind John. Her face and manners mimicked John in a feminine sort of way lacking only the heavier, slightly sharper musculature of the boy. John didn’t even turn as she entered the room, ‘Brittany, I finally got the hang of this thing! You don’t need to try and command each individual Hive-Bot but just give group commands. I also notice that the more Hive-Bots in the hive the less detail you have to give in your commands. Intelligence and awareness increase with the increased number of cluster members.’

  Brittany smirked at John, ‘Well little brother, maybe you should read the manuals before playing with them. The Hive-Bots react to the outside world and commands using Hive Matrix principals. The more members you have in the swarm the more processing power it has.’

  Brittany was in fact a few minutes older than her twin brother was. A fact she never let him forget. Brittany shared the methodical nature of her mother Sara along with a love of paleontology.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ John interrupted. ‘They combine to form a single consciousness. Individuals are each very small robotics manufactured using nanotechnology. The process is really neat, here’s a vid on it, but the vid is nothing compared to actually flying one of these things.’

  Hive-Bots use swarm technology to allow members of a large group of individuals act as a larger single entity. Each nanobot is self-assembled monolayer-by-monolayer on a molecular level using a coded head group to start the assembly. They grow into complex spheres barely a half of a millimeter in diameter with small fingers called appendages protruding from their surface. The fingers on each sphere can grip onto other nanobots, like the old Velcro strips, locking the individuals together. Unlike Velcro, they aren’t restricted to what they can grasp. Their small size allows them to grasp any roughness in the surface next to them. Even polished surfaces can be grasped using strong van der Waals forces at the atomic level.

  The interior of the sphere is what turns a nanobot into a Hive-Bot. Internals mimic the nerve fibers of the white matter of a brain in that each one is capable of rudimentary signal processing beyond a simple control of its appendages. Each Hive-Bot can received commands, process them and store data in memory cells that are smaller than the wavelength of visible light. Every Hive-Bot is a small and independent computer that communicates with the outside world using short range, high frequency waves or by direct contact.

  Hive-Bots, communicating with each other, share in common the processing of commands with the ability to increase their computational powers as the number of individual members increases. When in the presence of a gravitonic field the Hive-Bots can ride the field and actually fly or swarm as a single, fluid entity. The signal strength of non-contact communications drops off rapidly as the distance between Hive-Bot members increases. Hive-Bot configurations that touch are the strongest and fastest responding.

  ‘Watch this!’ John cried. The snake-like line of Hive-Bots flowed like liquid to reshape into a three-appendage statue about two feet high looking something like a fat saguaro cactus. The tips of each arm thinning out to form whip-like fingers that grabbed a paper from the desk and began folding. A long, sleek paper airplane formed and it pulled back and cast the airplane off into the air and across the room. The Hive-Bot then reshaped and smoothly glided quickly from the table to the floor to retrieve the airplane.

  After climbing up the leg of the table it reformed into a flat surface standing erect across the table-top like a sail. Across the face of the sail, a Vid of the broadcast from upstairs was displayed as a full color, two-dimensional image complete with audio.

  ‘I programmed this into the set earlier. I can have them reform their surfaces to reflect or absorb ligh
t from the room. I’ve taken the broadcast and flattened it to a two-dimensional image. Each image is stored in the Hive-Bots memory. The Hive-Bots along this outer face are then setup so that their appendages form gratings to diffract the room light. Like a mirror, they can reflect all the light, adsorb it for a black surface or filter it to reflect only selected wavelengths to give them color. The image is then displayed by using connected groups of Hive-Bots to form pixels across the surface. Sort of like the old LED televisions. I just display picture-after-picture to play the Vid.’

  ‘Now, you think that’s neat? Watch this!’

  The Hive-Bot vanished, but the audio of the broadcast continued.

  ‘I simply had the Hive-Bot display the image of the room behind it onto its front surface. Perfect camouflage, right? You’re still looking at the Hive-Bot but your brain makes you think it’s the wall and chair behind it.’

  ‘Well, I’m here because you are tuning Dad out again.’ Brittany chided her brother. ‘We need to assemble into the Star Lounge for a family introduction. Come, we need to go NOW!’

  * * * * *

  The GraviDynamics drive bay is located in the very center of the Argos. The bridge and Command Information Center, or CIC, are located in a ring surrounding the drive bay. As Mark watches, a new pattern of data emerges next to a section of the three dimensional Earth globe before them. It’s a landmass section that will someday be India, indicating that the third of a set of three geodetic satellites recently launched by Argos completed the self-test boot sequence. All satellites are on line. An operator in the back of the room begins the setup for a more complex task. A task involving the launching of twelve aquatic semi-autonomous drones that will begin a survey of the oceans.

  Watching the datastream in the CIC, Mark Nolen turns to a muscular jump-suited figure next to him, ‘I want to avoid the mountainous areas for the placement of the base Dan. The level of volcanic activity there is too high. We also need to situate in a relatively flat area for construction of our synchrotron. A location near a clean supply of sand as a resource for raw silicon would be convenient.’

  Colonel Daniel Drake is the commander of Blackwave Corporation security. His slim, erect figure hides the smooth muscular physique of a man long experienced in soldering. Blackwave Corporation was the best that Mark could find for active security. These men aren’t simple combat grunts. They all are ex-special forces with advanced degrees in addition to their military training. Three pilots even had close-order navy experience in the supercavitation underwater fighters. Mark had found them performing survey work in the oceans at the center of Europa and had to call in a few favors to get them released from their contracts. They would all be good security as well as technical assets for the expedition.

  ‘Got it, sir.’ Dan said as he downloaded the data key that they would need to access this datastream. ‘Relatively flat, good water supply, granite or basalt base for embed stability of the equipment but with a near supply of silicon. You would also like the site to be a location readily defensible with clear sighting for security and allowing us to provide a defense in depth against the local beasties. No swamps or tar flats for obvious health reasons.’

  Dan turned to Mark, ‘I’d like to send two of the shuttles to do a close fly-by and maybe a touch-down after I select a few potential sites. It should take a day. I’ll get back to you as soon as we clean up the data. Do you want me to take that dino-doc along? She seems to know a lot about the general geographic conditions.’

  ‘OK Dan, but don’t let her enthusiasm for the wildlife distract you from the mission. As a matter of fact, give me a call when you begin the fly-by. It might be best if I see as much first-hand as possible during site selection. We can monitor it from security. I’d like you there at tonight’s meeting. I’ll have your Hive Tab give you a poke to remind you about our first-data review in the Lounge at 18:30 hours. Bring any information you might have to the meeting. Assume all of the data is important.’

  ‘Most of all get this across to the guys going down on the shuttle. This is not yet home down there. It may look something like home but we don’t know what to expect. Take no chances I do not want anyone getting hurt. I also want breathers or filters worn until you confirm local gas content and aerobic content. We don’t know too much about bacteria and other airborne content in this era.’

  Marks conversations with Sara had already justified the cost of bringing her. She had stressed that many of the features of this time would be very familiar and then clearly pointed out just how much they would be alien. Familiar trees, plants and insects would be here along with some much unexpected surprises such as dragonflies with six-foot wingspans. The air-mix should not be a problem but tectonic activity is high and there could be pockets of gas spread over local areas.

  The greatest danger was likely to come from things too small to be seen. When explorers first visited North America they brought diseases that had evolved in the densely populated European civilization. The American Natives had not had the opportunity to develop immunity to the new contagion and suffered for it. Our bugs and disease had millions of years to evolve since the Cretaceous and might prove deadly to the habitants of this era. Then again, they may have no effect at all on the ancient genome.

  Mark had considered the cost very carefully and he chose to err on the side of caution. It was an expensive proposition but all equipment and every expedition member had been thoroughly sanitized prior to the trip. The personal experience had not been pleasant. Current theory was that even if they did introduce a new plague, the timeline would correct itself. Question was, how would time correct the fault? Better to play it safe and sanitize.

  The Argos itself ran a first pass on the new data, narrowed the potential sites down to twelve after four hours of data collection. Mark channeled a link to the results to the public folder. The meeting tonight will reduce the number of potential settlement sites even further, hopefully to three good ones with a few secondary’s. Mark toyed with the idea of a general fly-by to the southern polar region. It was just plain odd seeing no heavy ice caps at either pole, he thought to himself as he left to go and get another cup of coffee. If the conditions were friendly enough, a small study group located at one of the planets magnetic poles might prove interesting.

  * * * * *

  ‘Come on Seth, ask him. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t go. Besides, you are the captain of this ship, right? That puts you in charge. I can take care of myself, you know that.’ Brittany turned her full charm on the Hunter pilot. She had to look up into the deep blue eyes of the tall, thin and obviously muscular smiling face of the ex-marine in front of her. Seth Sassaman looked down on Brittany with a wide smile that always seemed to be in place. People who met Seth instantly felt as though they knew him for years. He didn’t fit the Navy Pilot mold. He didn’t have a Texas accent. His accent was odd, a little German in it with a touch of some oddly phrased sentences. Seth called it Pennsylvania Dutch.

  ‘Britt you’ve got to hold off a bit. Wait until your Mom comes and we’ll ask her. If she’s OK with coming then I’m OK with it. There’s no reason to go bothering Colonel Drake, and the Hunter is not a ship, it’s a reconnaissance vehicle.’ It was near impossible for Seth to ignore her when she was like this.

  Sara entered the hanger bay that stored the three Hunter Recons. The Hunters would be ideal for this first approach. A Hunter contained the smallest Gravitonic Drive made, allowing reactionless and independent flight. It could fly in air easily at ten times the speed of sound and turn on a dime and those inside it wouldn’t even feel the change. The Drive also allowed it to hover and land in any space large enough to hold the 120 by 30 foot frame. The vehicle is sleek with a roughly rectangular shaped body for cargo that narrowed to a clear missile-like nose cone for maximum pilot visibility. Heads-up displays in the cabin use the same base technology that bred the much simpler Emulate Projector with a bank of hard-wired backups situated on an almost transparent consol.

/>   Sara walked across the bay with a large metallic briefcase by her side. ‘Good morning Captain Sassaman I see you’ve met Brittany. Up a little early aren’t you Britt?’

  ‘Hi Doctor Wenford.’ Seth beamed a smile at her. ‘I hope you’ll call me Seth and Britt’s no problem at all. She was helping me stow some of your test equipment. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Thanks Seth, I prefer informality too so please call me Sara. First things first.’ Sara took a sip and turned. ‘Brittany, I already asked the Colonel and he said you could go, so stop pestering Seth. Besides, I’m looking forward to your suggestions. I see your brother’s with Dad today. Where’s Janet?’

  Janet Anderson emerged from the Hunter and waved to Sara. She had been part of the GraviDynamics Europa Staff and was famous for her theories on Jupiter’s Black Hole. A geophysicist by training, she was instrumental in the closely guarded and unpublished calculations showing the Cosmic String model of the Red Spot. She was as excited as Sara for the opportunity to visit the cretaceous.

  ‘All set, Cretaceous Tours Flight #1 ready for boarding.’ Seth announced. Brittany laughed at Seth’s light joke, immediately she took off in a banter of questions and comments that never seemed to annoy the boys and always amazed her mother.’

  They settled into the cabin, a set of doors opened in the bay below the Hunter showing a field of stars. The Gravitonic Drive maintained a gas barrier for the hanger but allowed the craft to be lowered out into the vacuum. A few seconds of weightlessness followed a final push before the Hunter was able to start its own drive and then an easy climb up to the blue and green globe above them.

  Seth’s eyes scanned the displays while he talked. ‘OK, that’s actually the worst part of the ride. Should be a smooth trip from here on in. Schedule calls for us to first visit the southern plain of what will be Central Europe up around 50 degrees latitude. It should be coming over the horizon any minute now.’