The Death of the Universe: Ghost Kingdom: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 2)

by Brandon Q Morris

  “I can’t manage any other way. The two of us have been together for several gigacycles. I don’t like cloning myself. It feels so abnormal.”

  Kepler straightened up. As it turned out, all three women were already bustling about the control room. He got out of the bed, almost floated away from it, and was a bit embarrassed because the others were already dressed. But what could he do if they didn’t keep him in the loop?

  Kepler moved off toward the shower, paddling with his arms. This left a trail of slime on the floor and ceiling, because the gel was flying off him in all directions.

  “Puppy, could you please do me a favor and bring me my things?”

  The butler didn’t answer, but when the hot water turned off, Puppy was standing there holding out a towel. Kepler dried himself off, slipped into the freshly washed clothes and went to join the others.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “A relay station has reported an unknown incident. It’s about autonomous unit FF02,” explained Ada.

  “Not FF01?”

  “No, but it’s an astonishing coincidence that FF02 was affected right after FF01.”

  “And I suppose we have to investigate? Why aren’t we already braking then?”

  “Because we’ll arrive too late if we brake,” said Ada.

  That was the disadvantage of traveling at close to the speed of light. They first had to get up to speed, which took weeks, and then decelerate again, which took just as long.

  “But how are we supposed to take a look if we’re speeding past?” asked Kepler.

  “We’re going to play at hitchhiking,” said Ada.

  “I’ve always wanted to hitchhike through the galaxy,” said Kepler. “Puppy, can you bring us some towels?”

  “The modern version,” said Ada. “We’ll send our consciousnesses ahead via light-speed laser transfer, borrow a few bodies, and then return to the ship the same way.”

  He hated being sent around the universe via laser. It wasn’t the mode of transport itself that was the problem, though there were people who generally mistrusted the technology. Of course, information did go missing, but so far no one had actually been permanently damaged. In the end, there was always a backup on Terra.

  He didn’t believe the horror stories about fragmented egos, accidental sex changes or manipulated memories. Those were old wives’ tales. But he was still reluctant to leave his body. It was his first, and he intended for it to be his last. If he had to die in it, then so be it. But when he left it alone, the risk that something would happen to it increased daily, and then he could be stranded without it.

  “That’s not going to happen,” said Kepler.

  “What do you mean?” asked Ada.

  “I’m not leaving my body behind.”

  “Kepler, you’ve often left it to travel in the ship and sent yourself ahead via laser!” said Zhenyi.

  That was true. But recently... something had changed in him since they had saved the universe. He felt even more strongly now that he belonged in his body.

  “That was before,” he said.

  “Oh come on, we need you.”

  It was good to hear Zhenyi say that. Ada and Valentina exchanged nervous glances.

  “It’s only going to be for a few days,” said Valentina. “Then you’ll get your body back.”

  Kepler rubbed his temples. He couldn’t exactly leave these three women hanging at a time like this. “Okay, agreed,” he said finally.

  But, this is the last time I am going to leave my body.

  Cycle HG 1.6, Inner Milky Way, 3 Kiloparsec Arm

  Space surrounding the Gigadyson was notably empty, out to a distance of three light days. When humanity had built the gigantic ellipsoid, they had used everything floating around near it as construction materials, and anything that remained afterward had been transported a safe distance away. The fact that this region was still called ‘3 Kiloparsec Arm’ was due to tradition alone. Without any stars, this arm of the Milky Way was no longer an arm. It was more like an ‘arm of nothing’ or a ‘way’ that was most like a riverbed.

  And yet, here was a ship, waiting in this middle-of-nowhere space. It had no registration nor even a name. This wasn’t the owners’ intent, it was just that they had so many other things to think about that titles weren’t a priority anymore.

  But at this moment the crew had nothing to do. They were waiting. They’d towed a giant, semi-transparent mirror to this location, measuring almost ten kilometers across. It had something in common with the mirror of the evil queen from the fairytale. But it had a different purpose. Anyone who looked at the mirror was caught in it forever. This wasn’t magic in any sense of the word. No one can perform magic tricks, not even the owners of this ship, who were certainly not lacking in knowledge.

  The image that a regular glass mirror shows is nothing more than the reflection of electromagnetic waves from the shiny metal on its back. The mirror in question let through three-quarters of all electromagnetic radiation that reached it. The remaining quarter was captured, analyzed, and redirected to its final destination.

  The mirror, the ship, and its crew were waiting for a laser pulse that had been sent several cycles ago by the spaceship Mario in the direction of a control station on the Gigadyson. The pulse was moving at light speed. It was completely invisible, but if the calculations were correct, it would hit the mirror right at this moment.

  This all took mere milliseconds. The message, which had only slightly decreased in intensity, was now continuing on its way to its destination. But now a copy existed, which was being processed in the ship’s powerful computers. The mirror had fulfilled its task.

  Someone pressed a button in the control room. Vibrations suddenly began to appear at the edge of the mirror, overlapping and amplifying each other until the brittle material of the mirror was over-stressed. The mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, just like that of the evil queen who flung hers down in a furious rage.

  Cycle HG 1.9, Gigadyson

  Something was missing. Kepler rolled his eyes. His vision was functioning wonderfully. He was standing in a chamber the size of a living room, the floor covered in a kind of fog. On the walls were shelves filled with boxes. In between the shelves were two robots, shackled to the wall. He looked down. Of course—his point of view was wrong! He could look directly to the left with his right eye and all the way to the right with his left.

  Kepler touched the middle of his face, between his eyes and mouth. He had no nose! A noise distracted him. A robot opposite him moved one of its arms. Neither of the other machines had noses either. Was there a mirror around here somewhere? The robot on the right laughed and pointed at him. Kepler didn’t need a mirror anymore. He looked just as ridiculous as the other two—and another robot that had been against the wall next to him was now marching into the middle of the room.

  That is, it tried to march. But it hadn’t realized there was no gravity, and it tumbled head over heels against the shelves. Kepler took stock of himself. He couldn’t actually tell if he was weightless. His own body always let him know very plainly, but this robot model didn’t possess any senses for this.

  Kepler pointed at the laughing robot. “Zhenyi, is that you?” Its voice had the same pattern as hers, even if it sounded a bit different. But that might be more to do with the fact that this body conducted sound differently than his own.

  “I’m Zhenyi,” said the robot on the left.

  That was definitely his girlfriend’s voice. The robots must have very flexible vocalizers.

  “And I’m Valentina,” said the robot on the right.

  “For the sake of completeness, I’m Ada,” said the robot that had just flown into the shelves. Ada attempted to get into a horizontal position, but she used too much strength and kept turning. “It’s really not so easy,” she said. “I keep propelling myself with all four arms, out of habit, and with this model that means twice as much momentum in two arms.”

  “You didn’
t tell me there weren’t going to be artificial bodies waiting for us,” said Kepler.

  “What do you mean? You’ve got one,” said Zhenyi.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No one said anything about biological bodies. It would be wasteful to keep four biological bodies in the station in the unlikely event that a group of four showed up.”

  That was true, of course. They still could have warned him. But then he would have protested even more. And a robot body like this did have its advantages. For example, he needed neither air nor food, and didn’t need to use the bathroom.

  “Then let’s get on with our assignment,” he said.

  “I’ve nearly got the hang of it,” said Ada. She was lying on the floor and holding her arms still. Then she slowly rose to her feet without moving her arms. It worked!

  “Congratulations!” said Valentina.

  “I’m slowly getting used to it.”

  Valentina slapped her on the back and Ada flew forward away from her. She landed against the shelving again. “Sorry,” said Valentina, “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it. It’s all good practice.”

  Cycle HG 2.0, Gigadyson

  The shuttle set down directly in the honeycomb section where FF02 had reported unusual activity. Kepler released the safety line and climbed down from the six-legged vehicle. The flight had reminded him of the trip in the convertible through the former Convention. He had no roof over his head this time either. The robot body had a few undeniable advantages, and one of them was the fact that it was so durable.

  His consciousness had also made friends with its new receptacle astonishingly quickly. Previously he’d needed a long adjustment period—and that was always the case in a biological body. Maybe the robot actually suited him better? In any case, this model was very simply constructed. For example, the limbs didn’t have joints, so he couldn’t kneel to reduce his height. But he could slide the upper legs down into the thicker lower sections of the legs. That was a distinctly more stable construction, because joints were prone to being damaged. But his gait was a bit stiff. They were lucky they weren’t walking in normal gravity.

  “We’ll go and take a look around,” said Ada. She had tied on a yellow kerchief. Valentina was wearing a green one and Zhenyi had chosen red—which Kepler could have predicted! Since all the women had them, he decided to forgo wearing one—three were enough to distinguish all four of them.

  “Then we’ll go down the shaft,” said Zhenyi.

  Of course. She knew how much he liked climbing into tight pipes. But Kepler didn’t say anything. His girlfriend probably secretly wanted to treat him to some confrontation therapy, but he saw right through it.

  They tottered stiffly over to the hatch. The low gravity turned each of their steps into a little jump. The hatch to the maintenance shaft stood open, without any sign of having been manipulated. Then Zhenyi discovered the hole drilled on the edge.

  A drilled hole was also discovered, on later inspection, at the location that repair probe BM13 had disappeared from. It was the first real similarity they had found. Kepler was pleased, but then full of doubt. They had only just landed and had already found an important clue. Hadn’t that gone a bit too smoothly? All that was missing was for Ada and Valja to find something, too.

  “We have it,” said Ada’s voice over the radio.

  “You have what?” asked Zhenyi.

  “FF02. The probe, or what’s left of it.”

  “Well, that’s... bring it here.”

  “We’re already on our way.”

  Zhenyi straightened up and looked toward the horizon. Instinctively, she held her hand up to shade her eyes, but there was no sun to dazzle her.

  “What about the shaft? Shouldn’t we take a look?” asked Kepler.

  “No, Johannes, that can wait.”

  He didn’t mind. What might be left of the poor probe? Ada had explained that they were only level 2 AIs, but still, he felt sorry for it. In its own way, it had lived. It would have enjoyed fulfilling its assignments.

  A head appeared over the wall that separated their honeycomb segment from the next. It was Ada. He recognized her green kerchief. No, wait—which one was wearing that color? Whoever it was, she was pulling a big piece of trash behind her. It gleamed in the light of the lamp on the robot’s back. It was probably a solar cell panel, which all autonomous units had.

  The robot let itself glide down elegantly. That must be Valja. She had gotten the hang of her new body really quickly. Then a second robot shot up from behind the wall and sailed tumbling through space. Ada had obviously given herself a bit too much momentum.

  “Sorry,” she called over the radio, “but I still haven’t quite adjusted from four arms to two.”

  What would it be like if he found himself in the body of a snail with neither arms nor legs? Or, how long would he need to get his bearings as a fish in the water? Evolution had brought about so much diversity, and yet even though the human consciousness was now completely unrestricted in selecting a body, most limited themselves to the archetypal template of two arms and two legs.

  “Kepler?”

  He looked at Zhenyi, who had just spoken to him.

  “Valja was asking what we think of it.”

  Valentina was now standing next to him. She held up the remains of the autonomous unit. Most of its body was missing. The parts that were still there looked strangely squished together. But the sensor head appeared to have sustained minimal damage.

  That’s great, Kepler wanted to say, but then he was uncertain. The sensitive head, of all things, in which some of the controls were located—undamaged? “That’s pretty strange,” he said, pointing at the head.

  “Lucky, I would say,” said Valentina.

  “Can we get a readout of what might still be stored in it?” asked Zhenyi.

  “At the control station,” replied Ada.

  “Then we should be on our way,” said Valentina.

  Kepler shook his head. It was all going too fast. The scientist in him demanded that they first investigate all circumstances thoroughly—even if that meant he’d have to climb into the shaft after all. “No, first we need to finish our work here,” he said. “Why was the shaft open? Who knows whether the autonomous unit will be able to reveal that?”

  “Kepler’s right,” said Zhenyi. “The probe may only have arrived here after the disturbance was logged. It definitely wouldn’t have recorded whatever happened before that. Maybe we’ll find some evidence.”

  Kepler plunged head-first into the shaft. Zhenyi had given him a sample collector. He just needed to hold the device on the spot he wanted to analyze. It would scratch material from it and save it in a tiny chamber for later analysis. The device even took note of the exact position from which the sample had been taken. Kepler placed the collector on the wall of the shaft at one-meter intervals. Now and then he also went a few meters into the side passages.

  It was impossible to move through the universe without leaving tiny traces behind. An astronaut who touched a wall with the gloves of their spacesuit or the sole of their shoe always left behind a few molecules of the material their clothing was made of. The analyzers on board the control station were sensitive enough to detect these molecules in the samples.

  Suddenly he no longer found the darkness and narrowness of the shaft so frightening. Was that because he knew the others were waiting for him above? Or was his work distracting him? The collector could take a maximum of 100 samples. Kepler was already approaching the inner-most side passage, but still had 32 empty sample slots left.

  It was hard to comprehend the extent of what humanity had achieved with the Gigadyson. The shell seemed to him to be very thick. So, 30 meters... that was the height of a ten-story apartment building. But the Gigadyson had a major axis of 45 light-years and a minor axis of 30 light-years. A mere 30 meters—that was less than the thickness of a human hair compared to the distance between Terra and the
sun.

  And yet the shell held. Le Corbusier had accomplished a true masterpiece. Kepler arrived at the interior hatch. He took a sample from its surface. Should he open it and have a look at the interior? He didn’t need to be afraid of being caught in the stream of a jet, because the hatch would refuse to open in such an event. Kepler entered his personal code. The electronics verified it and the hatch slid to the side.

  The quasar in the interior dazzled him. The sensitivity of the robot’s visor was automatically reduced. Kepler measured the intensity of the light. It was one-and-a-half times as bright as Terra’s sun when viewed from the surface of Terra. And at this distance! Terra’s orbit was only about eight light minutes away from its local star, compared to the many light years here.

  “Everything okay down there?” asked Zhenyi.

  Her voice sounded distorted. That must be due to the thickness of the walls. She had probably noticed that he hadn’t moved for a while. But it was nice that she was worried about him. “Everything’s great. I’m just taking some samples from the interior.”

  She didn’t reply.

  Kepler drifted a few meters out into space to get a better overview. It wasn’t until then that he realized he wasn’t in his spacesuit, but in a robot body. And this model had arms and legs but no jets he could use to fly back to the wall. Up on top that hadn’t been a problem, due to the low but still downward gravity. It had always reliably pulled him back to the surface. Here the gravity didn’t draw him to the shell, but toward the core of the Gigadyson, so he should definitely have used a safety line. But it was hanging uselessly from his hip.

  Kepler started sweating, even though the robot was incapable of that. Stay calm, Kepler. The others are only a radio call away, he told himself. “Zhenyi? I’ve made a slight mistake,” he said.

  No answer. He increased the volume, but that just made the crackling in his ears louder.