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

by Brandon Q Morris

  It was a smart decision. It meant the others had to trust them, had to free them from the wall and completely induct them into their plan.

  Unknown cycle 0.4, unknown location

  “Let’s go,” said the fake Zhenyi. Kepler decided to call her Z from now on, to stop his thoughts from getting too muddled. And the other Kepler would be K. Agent K. He seemed to remember the name from some ancient film.

  “It’s about time, too,” said Zhenyi.

  “We had to prepare a few things.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been busy here, too. Did you know there are 632 structural disturbances in the ceiling?”

  Z looked at the ceiling. “I can’t see anything.”

  “They’re no bigger than a micrometer.”

  “I see,” said Z. “I’m going to release your shackles now. Don’t panic.”

  Kepler heard a clanking sound to his left and right sides, and then he slid down the wall. It took him a moment too long to react. His consciousness had obviously not been prepared to take over the robot body again. He landed on his backside.

  “Very elegant, Johannes,” said Zhenyi, who was standing on her robot legs and reaching out a hand to him.

  “I was just about to say that,” said Z.

  Great. Now I’ve got two women to make fun of me. Where is K? Theoretically, he should understand me better than any other human in the universe. Kepler took the helping hand and straightened himself up. “And now?” he asked.

  “Come with me,” Z commanded.

  They left the room in single file. Kepler could only just fit through the door. The ship wasn’t designed to accommodate this model of robot. But that didn’t surprise him, because this model was designed for fieldwork. If this robot type found itself on this ship, then it would normally be somewhere outside, on the other side of the airlocks. It was strange, but Kepler found himself considering the other robots his own kind. Existence determines consciousness. Who had said that?

  “Careful, it’s narrow here,” Z warned.

  Kepler noticed this doorway connected the storage bay with the living area. Everything was starting to seem familiar to him now. The door was narrow so that it could seal quickly if something happened in the storage bay. They must be on board a ninety-niner. Pity! Kepler had expected something exotic. But it made sense. Anyone wanting to manipulate the Gigadyson inconspicuously shouldn’t fly through space in a gleaming first-class cruiser. A standard ninety-niner was sufficient.

  The control room was also arranged in a familiar pattern. There were two gel beds to enable human passengers to endure the acceleration force. But why only two? Shouldn’t there be four? Then he realized that they didn’t need beds. This would be an interesting experience. He had always envied the butler, who could keep walking around even at 6 g. The solid construction and generously proportioned muscles of their robot bodies should make it possible for them, too.

  “Don’t worry, brackets have been provided on the rear wall for you two,” said Z. She must have followed his gaze. “There are power and data ports within reach.”

  Brackets? Very enlightening! They were going to be restrained during the acceleration phase, because otherwise they could interfere with things while Z and K were condemned to inactivity in the gel beds.

  “Of course, you can release the brackets yourself when the opportunity arises,” said Z.

  “Where are we going?” asked Zhenyi.

  “We’re already there,” said Z.

  She pulled a screen down from the ceiling. It displayed the typical honeycomb segments of the Gigadyson.

  “We’re flying to the Gigadyson. How original.”

  “This is one set of coordinates where we have things to do. And as we’re nearby, we may as well do it now. The majority of our time is wasted on traveling between locations.”

  “And what exactly does ‘things to do’ mean?” asked Kepler.

  “You’ve already figured that out,” said Z. “Those were seismic measurements taken using your lower body, weren’t they?”

  “Exactly. Were you already watching me then? There was no ship nearby.”

  “That’s what you thought, anyway.”

  “I actively surveyed in all wavelengths.”

  “Sure. But what you don’t recognize, you can’t see.”

  “Oh, don’t be so cryptic.”

  “We’ll fill you in on everything. But first we need to take care of what we came here to do. Kepler is already waiting for us at the shuttle.”

  The shuttle was certainly not standard issue. Kepler stopped in his tracks. In front of him stood a round, roughly one-meter-high platform about thirty meters in diameter—something like a very large podium. An orb was attached to it, about six meters across, lit by two floodlights that gave it a golden hue. It looked like it was actually made of pure gold. On top of the orb someone had apparently improvised with parts from a real shuttle. The structure looked like a jumble that couldn’t possibly function, because the thruster at the end of the shuttle looked far too small. It was like someone was trying to make a ninety-niner go at half the speed of light using a spray can.

  But Z’s face was impassive. The construction must have been thoroughly tested. The low power of the thrusters suggested that the orb must weigh almost nothing. Was it empty?

  “How much does that orb weigh?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” said Z, laughing.

  She knew just how to irritate him with cryptic answers. There was quite a bit of Zhenyi in her. Z pushed off and drifted up toward the shuttle.

  The thruster was powerful enough to launch them into a low orbit above the Gigadyson. Could Z actually be right? Did the orb really weigh nothing? Kepler held onto the outer surface of the shuttle. He had requested not to fly in the cabin when they launched. A human in a spacesuit approached him.

  “It’s me,” said Kepler’s voice.

  Kepler froze. Maybe his electronics had cooled down so much that he was no longer able to move. The man in front of him had his stature and his voice, and he was probably even thinking his thoughts. It was like a mirror image he could touch. Creepy. He had never met himself before, so it was normal to be nervous, right?

  “Me too,” said Kepler.

  The man laughed. “I like your sense of humor. Seems very familiar.”

  “And I like your short sentences, K... K... Kepler.”

  He found it difficult to address someone else using his own name. He wasn’t one to talk to himself.

  “You can call me Johannes.”

  “That would be even weirder, downright insane in fact, like talking to my reflection as though it was a stranger. Because I don’t think of myself as Johannes,” he explained. “I’m Kepler, that’s my name for myself.”

  “I know, it’s the same for me.”

  “When I think about you, I call you K.”

  K laughed. It was a short laugh, basically just a vocalized snort. It was his own laugh.

  “So do I,” said K.

  Kepler laughed too, and then one more time. He felt like he had to have the last laugh, so that it remained his laugh.

  “Do you know Kafka?” asked K.

  “Because of K? It makes me think of an ancient film in which there’s an Agent K,” Kepler replied. “That’s what I told Zhenyi.”

  “No, you didn’t tell her that. You just thought it when Zhenyi was standing in front of you—my Zhenyi in the biological body. So, do you call her Z?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought so.”

  This was getting to be too much. This K only seemed to be here to sniff around in his thoughts. His presence made Kepler uncomfortable. K probably saw through him. Who wanted to be completely understood by their double? That would be a nightmare. It was lucky nothing like that was possible between real people.

  “Was there anything else?” he asked peevishly.

  “Actually, I came here to show you the curtain.”

  “The ‘curtain?’”

  “The word
isn’t particularly descriptive, I know. But we couldn’t come up with a better term. Maybe you can think of one.”

  “Shouldn’t we bring the women along too?”

  “No need. They’re controlling the curtain from the cabin and watching what happens on screen. Oh, we’re up.” K looked down at his feet, presumably checking his footing. Then he pointed straight ahead.

  At first Kepler could only see the round belly of the orb, but then something extended into his field of view. It was the podium. The shuttle slowly sank toward the surface, while the circular podium continued to expand. It grew to a diameter of 50 meters, then 75, 100, and didn’t stop growing until it was 200 meters across.

  “What is that?” asked Kepler.

  K put a finger to his mouth in front of his mask. The shuttle bucked slightly, as though it had landed. “The underside of the orb has just set down on the Gigadyson,” explained K.

  “And now?”

  “It has a ring of small jets just above the ground. What we brought with us in the orb is now firing out of them. It’s spreading out. This big round surface is what we call the curtain, because it hangs around the edge of the structure like a curtain.”

  Ah, so by ‘curtain’ he means what I’m thinking of as the ‘podium,’ thought Kepler. It was a strange word to use.

  “At the outermost edge, the curtain hangs down to the ground. Nanomachines are quickly welding it to the surface. That secures the whole area under the curtain, so that the contents of the orb can be distributed evenly.”

  “The stuff from the orb removes the surface,” said Kepler. “Is it some kind of acid?”

  Everything was happening in low gravity. So it must be possible to vaporize the surface using an acid vapor, wait for it to take effect, and then suck up what was left together with the upper layer of the Gigadyson. However, Kepler didn’t know any acid that could dissolve a whole meter of various alloys so quickly—they would have to repeat the curtain exercise thousands of times. That was unrealistic.

  “I take back the question,” said Kepler. “It can’t be an acid. So what is it?”

  “Sorry, but Zhenyi made me promise not to give anything away until she’s shown you something.”

  “Okay, but what does she want to show us?”

  “Men, hurry up,” said Zhenyi over the radio. No, it must be Z.

  The curtain—the podium—contracted again. Looking at the walls dividing the sections, Kepler believed he could recognize that the surface was now one meter lower. K pushed off and sailed over the shrinking podium toward the surface of the Gigadyson. Kepler followed him. The women were already waiting for them. Z had brought out a device that was apparently collecting samples from the surface.

  “We’ll take a look at the maintenance shaft,” said Zhenyi.

  She didn’t wait for permission, but just marched off. Kepler glanced at K. He nodded, so Kepler followed Zhenyi. It was also clearly visible at the maintenance shaft that one meter was missing.

  “Very successful, your activities,” said Zhenyi.

  She reached out her hand to him. He took it and squeezed it. Zhenyi grimaced. Right, the data transmission. He stretched out his two fingers.

  “Distract them,” said Zhenyi via their secret channel, “while I open the shaft.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “We have to pass on what we know, and we can’t do that from here. You have to trust me. Watch me, and when the hatch is open, jump in.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll close the hatch, then I’ll enter the wrong code three times.”

  “That won’t hold them off for long.”

  “No, but you’ll have a 15-minute head start, at least, because that’s how long the lock will be disabled. I’ll try to decommission our doppelgangers. I’m stronger than they are and can use that to my advantage. You fly through the inner hatch to another maintenance shaft, get yourself back up to the top, and try to get the attention of a control station.”

  “If they realize things are getting serious, they might stop at nothing. I don’t want you to stay here. You can follow me into the shaft. We’ll escape together.”

  “The hatch can only be locked on the inside against attacks from the inside. So I have to stay outside. I can only operate it from out here. Otherwise we’ll only have a few seconds’ advantage, and that would never be enough.”

  “You underestimate the interior of the Gigadyson,” said Kepler. “We have a significant advantage in our robot bodies.”

  Kepler was reminded of his last visit. He wouldn’t do anything in there without a safety line.

  “If we go together we won’t even reach the interior. Entering the code and opening the inner hatch takes at least 15 seconds. By that time they’ll have caught up to us.”

  “And if we defend ourselves?”

  “It’s too much of a risk. I don’t know what hidden weapons they might have. My plan is the only way to buy you a 15-minute head start. If we want to warn humanity, at least one of us has to survive.”

  “Then that should be you, Zhenyi. Please.”

  “Don’t argue with me. We have to do this now. Otherwise they’ll become suspicious.”

  “No, I’m not leaving you alone here.”

  “My love, if you mess this up, I’ll never talk to you again.”

  Man, Zhenyi, he thought. She really meant it. If he refused to go along with her plan, he’d lose her forever, but she’d survive. If he cooperated, he’d probably still lose her, because she’d die. If he was unselfish he’d refuse. But he was an egotist. And yet, she’d see it the other way around. She’d be grateful to him for sacrificing her. After all, Zhenyi was a bit crazy.

  “Understood,” he signaled via the data channel.

  The whole conversation had only taken three seconds. That was the advantage of high transmission capacity. Neither Z nor K had noticed. They thought in human cycles, not robot time. Zhenyi entered the code. Kepler positioned himself in front of her so that at least K couldn’t see her. Z was still busy with her probes. But now she was standing up. She looked over at the maintenance shaft.

  “Everything okay over there?” she asked.

  “Yes. It’s impressive how cleanly the material has been removed here,” said Kepler. When will Zhenyi be done? “What substance do you use for this, by the way?”

  Z came closer. “I’ll explain that to you soon, I promise.”

  Zhenyi tapped him. That was the signal. He turned around, leapt up, grasped onto the hatchway, and swung himself inside. Now he had to quickly descend. It went dark. Zhenyi must have closed the hatch as planned. Only 20 more meters, then 10. He was at the inner hatch. He entered the code. Was that a shadow I just saw? he asked himself. No, it can’t have been.

  The upper hatch would now be locked for almost 15 minutes. He didn’t need to be in such a hurry. But he mistyped the code the first time. Shit! If that happened twice more, he’d be trapped. But the second time it worked. The hatch slid to the side. Kepler clipped his safety line onto the conduit, then climbed out. He tried to ignore the quasar at the center. The jets wouldn’t get him. The timing was right.

  He had to move to the right. Kepler tried to make his way by pushing off sideways from the interior surface. But he wasn’t making any headway. In fact, quite the opposite—something was pushing him back toward the hatch. Was it the same force that had rescued him last time? Why wasn’t it letting him float to the next maintenance channel? Was it afraid of him, or was it working under the instructions of K and Z?

  It was hard to comprehend—and very disturbing. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t see anything. Even his robot senses weren’t perfect. But the force had a clearly repellent effect. He wasn’t made of magnetic material, and he had no electrical charge. So why was he being repelled? He could feel it quite distinctly, even though it was physically impossible. Could his senses be deceiving him due to the high radiation exposure?

  He reached the inner hatch again and w
as moved helplessly back inside it, despite his attempts to resist. The hatch even closed itself, although he hadn’t given it the command, and there was no one else there who could have done so. It was crazy. Or he was crazy. Then his battery symbol flashed on again. He recognized the red light. He’d soon...

  Unknown cycle 0.5, unknown location

  “Thank God you’re alive!”

  He was alive. Kepler wasn’t surprised. He’d come close to death so many times recently that he’d started to develop a tolerance. Which wasn’t a bad thing. Being relaxed in the face of death was a trait that distinguished heroes. The battery symbol was still flashing red. He couldn’t move his head. There still wasn’t enough power. He had probably just been reconnected to the power source. He knew this room well. He must be back hanging on the wall.

  But something was different. Zhenyi was standing in front of him and inspecting him from top to bottom.

  “Take your time,” she said. “I’ve only just been able to hang you up to recharge. We arrived back at the ship half an hour ago.”

  “What happened?” Kepler still remembered the force that had pushed him back into the shaft.

  “I was hoping you could tell me. We found you drained of power at the inner hatch.”

  “There was... and Z and K didn’t say anything?”

  “Z and K?”

  “That’s what I call our clones.”

  “Z makes me think of zombies. But no, they didn’t say anything. They want to show us something. After that we’ll understand everything, they claim.”

  Zhenyi grabbed his fingers. It tickled. Then he realized what she wanted. He read the data stream that was flowing across his fingers.

  “What happened?” Zhenyi asked in this mode.

  “I know I left the shaft and was in the interior of the Gigadyson. The next hatch was almost within view. The jets didn’t hit me. But then something pushed me back.”