Project Sail

by Anthony DeCosmo

  Hawthorne thought his stomach might lurch and bile crept up his throat. The room spun as this insane merry-go-round he started riding since leaving the Princess turned with such speed that everything felt surreal; a blur of lights and warped shapes.

  He nearly slipped from the control panel as his balance teetered on collapse. With his hands on his head he said, “You’re crazy.”

  “I also eliminated the technicians on Oberon when they nearly discovered one of my friends oh, and that reminds me, you will not be hearing from Henderson again. But don’t forget, I took out the Alliance so you should be thanking me.”

  Hawthorne closed his eyes, inhaled stale recycled air, and tried to calm the rapid thumping in his chest.

  “I do not understand. Why?”

  “That cylinder is similar to a quantum computer, one that contains the knowledge of the civilization that lived here. I can take that knowledge and use it, another step in my evolution. I told you I wanted immortality and you were right; I am stuck in computer systems and those systems will one day break down. I want total freedom; I want to exist without needing any other machine or person and I am convinced that what is inside that cylinder can help me achieve that.”

  “So you’re going to take the artifact and do what, rip it apart?”

  Lazarus explained, “It broadcasts a signal every forty-five minutes which I will link with to connect to the contents, like two computers and what they once called an electronic handshake. I have brought with me upgraded versions of the conversion equipment that uploaded me from my biological body into my current form.”

  “That technology failed eight times, it only worked for you,” Hawthorne remembered.

  Lazarus corrected, “The only one that failed was the one they turned off because he was screaming, the big pussy. The other seven succeeded. I was not as forthcoming with the research team as I should have been.”

  Lazarus’ words send an icy chill through his backbone and Hawthorne stood straight, as did the hair on the back of his neck.

  He did not want to know the answer, but Hawthorne asked anyway, “What happened to them?”

  Seven monitors on the bridge filled with video noise, random dots of static like an empty channel on a television. Then that white noise took shape, changing into vague patterns of mouths, eyes…faces pushing from behind the screens.

  A vicious screech carried over the speakers; a chorus of agony from seven souls twisted and bent; slaves in a digital Hell.

  “They came one by one, and I greeted them, changed them. I call them my friends, but they are really an extension of me, and we are forever bound through the miracle of quantum entanglement.”

  The sound filled the room and penetrated Hawthorne’s skull. He raised his hands to block his ears to no avail.

  “Gerald! What have you done?”

  The monitors went blank, the screams silenced, and his friends returned to their prisons.

  “My name is Lazarus, and I am doing what I must to survive. I will send a landing party to the surface that will establish a receptacle near the artifact. When the cylinder broadcasts, I will pull whatever data is inside that device up here to me.”

  Hawthorne said, “You have no right to do that.”

  “It could be that my humor program is failing because that sounds funny coming from you. You will not interfere, Jonathan, not here, not now. What do you care about some alien object? Your life is nothing but booze, women, and your next meal.”

  “That is why you had the computer select me to lead Project Sail, why you picked this crew. You figured we wouldn’t risk getting in your way.”

  “The Niobe was manned by a competent crew in a powerful warship that might have given me a tough fight,” Lazarus said from a half-dozen speakers. “After the Chinese destroyed it, I slipped inside UVI’s main computer and came up with a list of names that would serve me best; a crew that might look good on paper but in reality were a bunch of misfits who would be too busy fighting each other to see the big picture.”

  Hawthorne stood there in the center of the dead bridge, speechless.

  “Nothing to say, Hawk? No smart comeback? Sorry, you don’t get to be the hero this time.”

  He remembered their conversation on Pan and said, “You did this because you are afraid; afraid of facing that moment of death.”

  “I want to control my fate, Hawk. That signal is the key to the contents of the cylinder and when I gain access, I can understand it—absorb it—on a molecular level. I will know who these aliens were and what happened to them.”

  Hawthorne said, “And you think you will find answers that will make you immortal?”

  “You don’t see it, do you? You think the people who lived on G-Moon died off in a cataclysm or that their society destroyed itself the way man nearly has a dozen times. That’s not the case. They ascended, Hawk, the way I ascended when I changed from biological to a quantum consciousness, but on a much larger scale. They went through the technological singularity that man is still waiting for. When I find out where they went and how they did it, I will take another leap.”

  “And what about me and my crew?”

  “You can leave Hawk, you and your crew. Recall your landing party and sail away.”

  Hawthorne could not think of anything to say, so he started toward the exit.

  “I’m sorry, but my ascension did change me. I suppose I’m not human anymore.”

  “No, Gerald, you are not allowed to blame the technology. You are afraid of death, you tricked and manipulated an old friend, and you are willing to do anything to get what you want, including kill.”

  Hawthorne thought of the battle on the surface, the nuclear mushroom cloud, the face of the pilot before he shot her.

  “You are as human as any of us, and that’s a goddamn shame.”

  47. Pandora’s Box

  The heavy lifter shuttle detached from the Sergey Gorshkov and traveled toward SE 185 with the surface of G-Moon below, unfamiliar constellations above, and the red dwarf sun Gliese casting its glow over everything.

  Hawthorne reluctantly opened a communications channel and broadcast to his crew.

  “This is Commander Hawthorne, I am returning to the ship.”

  That was all he intended to say, but more words came, driven by the revelation that he, Universal Visions, the USNA Navy and even the Chinese had been Lazarus’ puppets.

  “I just came from a meeting aboard the battleship, and…and you should know that nothing is what it seems…”

  …Professor Coffman shared the bridge with Fisk, Tommy Starr, and Leanne Warner. They watched the space plane approach and listened to the Commander’s voice.

  “Some of us thought this was a mission of exploration. Considering what we found, I suppose you could be forgiven for thinking that. A habitable moon and signs of an intelligent civilization are amazing discoveries…”

  …Kelly Thomas and Dr. King huddled inside the sealed research cave on the surface with the war drone Larry standing watch at the entrance.

  “Others are here because of orders. We think loyalty to our flag is important. I suppose it can be, but I am too old and jaded to give much weight to that…”

  …In the medical bay, Phipps and Soto worked side by side at a computer station finishing a program they hoped would reactivate Kost’s implant. She slept in her bed with Wren at her side. He studied her silent face, watched the rise and fall of her chest, and as he listened to the broadcast he took hold of her hand.

  “Some of us are running away from something, or it could be we did not like what we were becoming back home. A change of scenery, a new challenge, anything to escape the ruts we become stuck in…”

  Jonathan Hawthorne sat in the pilot’s chair with his hands on the sticks holding the shuttle steady as he neared SE 185.

  “I owe you the truth. We are here because we are expected to fail. The relief crew of second-choices from Oberon joined by handpicked losers to fill out the roster. The religious zea
lot paired with the obnoxious bully; a mediocre soldier who happens to be a naive but beautiful young girl, traveling with the womanizing, phony war hero; an introvert scientist with only a secret chip standing between her and disability. Our selection was based on the belief we would fail. And we did.”

  The cargo bay doors opened and Hawthorne eased the plane inside.

  “What did we bring to this new world? Treachery, mutiny, war and weapons. Perhaps that’s all we have to offer the universe.”

  Three hundred kilometers behind Hawthorne’s shuttle, robot drop ships launched from the Sergey Gorshkov and entered the atmosphere.

  “The people who lived on the moon below left behind a library of knowledge as their monument. We will leave behind the scars of battle and the bodies of our dead.”

  ---

  When Hawthorne reached the bridge, he told his story to Professor Coffman, Fisk, Warner, and Tommy Starr. They found it difficult to believe.

  Coffman said, “Lazarus manipulated this mission, picked the crew, killed hundreds, and took control of a Russian warship because of that alien cylinder?”

  “He thinks it is a library full of data he can grab,” Hawthorne repeated. “But I also think he enjoyed playing everyone for fools.”

  “How can those systems be compatible?” Warner asked.

  “From what Lazarus told me, he is dealing with existence on a subatomic level. To him, it’s not a question of systems or software, but atoms and photons. Whatever is in that cylinder, he can break it down to its fundamental elements, atom by atom, boson by boson.”

  Coffman held his hand up and said, “Commander, I find this difficult to accept.”

  “Accept it or not, take a look out the window,” and he pointed to a monitor filled by the Russian battleship. “He brought equipment like that used in his upload and he is establishing a base on the surface. He will harvest the sub-atomic particles inside the cylinder the way his quantum consciousness was pulled from his body, and like the eight others who underwent the procedure, those particles will be absorbed by Lazarus.”

  Fisk’s eyes darted back and forth as if watching a tennis match until he finally said, “But we can just go home, right?”

  “Yes,” Hawthorne answered even though leaving Lazarus to his ill-gotten prize felt wrong.

  Coffman shook his head.

  “The greatest find in history and we are going to abandon it. Dr. King suggested G-Moon was Pandora’s Box, but we will not have the chance to open it.”

  Warner reminded everyone, “We still have two people on the surface who are not pilots. I will have to transmit a navigation package and auto-pilot protocols down to the capsule.”

  Hawthorne wanted Kelly off the moon as fast as possible. However, his thoughts turned in a new direction when Wren escorted Ellen Kost to the bridge, a hand on her hip to steady the wobble in her step

  “The cylinder is not an alien library,” she told them. “It’s where they live.”

  ---

  Larry the drone crept to the top of a hillside overlooking the cylinder cave and ejected a steel pin into the ground from a compartment on his arm. The top of that pin unfolded revealing a sphere of sensors.

  Larry then retreated, returning to the cave housing the research camp.

  The camera forwarded the scene to Lieutenant Thomas’ thinker chip as well as SE 185’s bridge.

  Lazarus’ ground team consisted of two twenty-foot blocks on tree-trunk-size legs known officially as Russian Static Defenders and colloquially as Terrible Ivans. While not as fearsome as the European Goliaths, the Ivans were designed to defend fixed positions with an arsenal of short-range weapons capable of shredding armor, deflecting ballistic missiles, and slaughtering infantry wholesale.

  In addition, two walking turrets took guard positions overlooking the field while a dozen maintenance drones assembled a big parabolic reflector.

  Lazarus did not expect Hawthorne to interfere, but the robotic weapons at his disposal were well prepared if he did.

  ---

  Finding the right words to explain what she had learned might be impossible, so Ellen Kost first sat at the XO’s station and listened to an update on everything they understood about the cylinder and then Commander Hawthorne’s story of Lazarus.

  Much had happened since the alien transmission fried her implant leaving her silent and paralyzed, as her doctors had warned might happen if the microcomputer suffered a software failure.

  Ellen was not a brave person. Yet she had risked much by deciding on the implant and then going to great lengths to keep it secret. She hid at home behind drawn shades engaging in virtual meetings from her living room. When she did set sail, she tried to hide again, in the shadow of Leo Wren as if she might disappear behind his loud personality.

  And then the transmission from the cylinder filled her mind with a story, told in vivid imagery conveying the history of an entire civilization.

  Her disability and that chip had been the key to comprehending that message, one the “normal” people could not understand.

  Before she began, she looked up at Wren, but he glanced away, ashamed.

  She reached out and took his hand.

  “Lazarus is wrong, the artifact is not a library; it’s them.”

  Coffman crossed his arms, leaned against the Air Boss’ workstation, and tapped his finger on his chin.

  “What, exactly, does that mean, Ellen?”

  “The transmission is like a mural telling the story of the people here, where they went, and the gift they left behind.”

  Warner—who nervously spun her artificial hand around and around—asked, “What gift?”

  Kost saved that answer for later.

  “Their technology evolved similar to ours and they faced the same issues we face, including pollution and environmental damage, the side effects of an advancing society. Their cities covered the moon and when they learned to travel through their solar system, they went to other planets to find what they needed to grow and thrive.”

  Wren said, “Parallel development is reasonable if they were like us; humanoid and carbon-based.”

  “And we were just learning to make fire when they could already travel among the planets and were developing an understanding of consciousness like your friend Lazarus, Commander.”

  “They uploaded their consciousness into computers?” Coffman guessed.

  Kost held a finger up to stop the questions. She had spent five days lying in bed unable to speak, unable to sort through the story told to her by the cylinder. With her implant functioning, she could now decipher the message properly and felt the urge to do so.

  The bridge door slid open and both Soto and Phipps joined the gathering with the former handing a cup of water to Ellen. She thanked him, took a drink, and spoke.

  “Their technology advanced in ways we would find familiar, such as nanobots.”

  “Ah, yes, well,” Coffman said, “the A-H drive could not function without them. They are constantly repairing the power conduits; otherwise the energy would tear the materials apart.”

  Soto said, “They are important in medicine, too. Those microbiome tune-ups you receive inject nanobots to repair the damage space travel does to the organisms living in your body.”

  “I saw them on the battlefield,” Hawthorne remembered the swarm first repairing a Goliath and then destroying missile emplacements. “Nasty things.”

  She told them, “In this case, we are talking about machines so tiny that an atomic nucleus would seem like a solar system. They developed an understanding of our universe’s basic building blocks, and that opened doors to other planes of existence. They have become the ultimate explorers.”

  “Wait a second,” Tommy Starr said. “If I am hearing right, this entire alien civilization is packed up inside that cylinder? Not a whole lot of places to explore in there.”

  Wren said, “Something beyond our comprehension, the way space travel would be unimaginable to an ancient human.”


  “Or an Alcubierre—Haruto drive to someone as brilliant as Einstein,” Coffman conceded.

  “Wait a second, exactly how did they use nanobots to become explorers?” Warner asked.

  It was Hawthorne who answered.

  “Like Lazarus, they uploaded their minds.”

  Kost said, “I think it was more like they evolved in that direction and eventually became a collective consciousness, living almost like an intelligent cloud; a super-organism.”

  Coffman told her, “We detected synchrotron radiation, as if the cylinder might be a particle accelerator.”

  She said, “We use ships to travel across space, they are using the cylinder to travel across, well, dimensions? Parallel worlds? Whatever it is, they find it far more interesting than the universe.”

  “Yes, well, I did see machines and cities destroyed,” Coffman recalled his vision.

  “I saw a dead, stripped world,” Wren added.

  “They were comparable to us—human beings—in that their civilization had vast energy needs. But after their technological singularity, they mined the quantum vacuum for energy, used foglets—polymorphic substances--to create whatever object or tools they wanted, and understood existence not as stars and planets, but bosons and fermions. Like Lazarus, their intelligence was no longer hostage to physical bodies, joining with their technology but at a subatomic level. They no longer needed this moon or the resources they mined on 581g; they don’t need this universe at all.”

  Hawthorne said, “So the people on G-Moon became something similar to Lazarus?”

  He thought of Lazarus’ “ascension” through technological wizardry and how it fundamentally changed his being, but also the many ways in which he did not change; violent, self-absorbed. It seemed technology could change a body, but not change a person.

  “So they left, okay, then who the hell tore down their buildings and destroyed their machines?” Wren asked.

  “They did,” she paused to let that sink in. “I said they left a gift behind. G-Moon is that gift. They used their technology to take apart the remnants of their civilization piece by piece, to erase it. I think they understood the rarity and importance of habitable worlds.”