The Way of the Dhin

by John L. Clemmer

  “Right! Look, instead of trying to use the Dhin engine as an offensive weapon, we’ve determined it’s a far better solution for a defensive weapon without requiring effort on our part to modify the core device, or its outputs! It’s so obvious!” Chuck said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, you know how the thing won’t crash—or can’t—right?”

  “Sure, I had some real-time demonstrations on that in addition to seeing the test reports. Up close demonstrations. With Jake.” Ethan said.

  “Ah. Heh. So you experienced first-hand how fast the thing takes off, and how absurdly fast it can turn, or stop. And, well, not hit anything, even right up to the point of contact at very high speeds. It just decelerates, turns, dodges, or stops. It doesn’t bump into things if they’re massive objects. Even when we measured that it actually touched a surface, it transferred no kinetic energy to what it ‘hit.’ Zero force transferred.”

  “Yeah, wild. And of course, impossible,” said Ethan.

  “So, the British, German, and Indian Coalition teams were working on plans for wind tunnel testing with Engine Two when it came to them. See, Ethan? What’s amazing, and slappingly obvious now, is that the same process that prevents damage in flight—that keeps it from ever hitting anything with any force—works just the same for things trying to hit it. It’s a matter of reference frames. From its perspective, there’s no meaningful difference between it rushing at an object like a bullet, or a bullet rushing at it! The thing’s invulnerable when it’s turned on.”

  “Wow. And as much as anything about this makes sense, that makes sense. Ruiz is gonna love that.”

  “I hope so. Seems like he’s had his heart set on a rail gun or death ray, you know.”

  “I think he’ll come around. Telling him we’ve got invulnerable tanks in the works ought to win a lot of points.”

  “Invulnerable tanks that can fly.”

  ***

  Jake tried to convince himself he wasn’t frightened. He always did this before a new test sequence. He paced back and forth on the tarmac outside the launch control center, gazing out at the dark scrub and beige soil patterns on the hills in the distance. He spun on his heel and turned to face the Pacific.

  OK, don’t lie to yourself, Askew. You have plenty of fear in here, too. You’ve got to have fear. Without fear, you’re just stupid.

  Neither the ocean nor the hills countered his assertion. Jake stretched his arms out and back. He then bent back his wrists, and took the deepest breath he could. He exhaled fully.

  We still don’t know how long this thing can run on a full tank. Or full charge. Or whatever the heck it is that powers it.

  The familiar pacing and stretches slowly worked. As they always did. His pacing slowed and took a longer path. His breathing reaching a mellow cycle. The bleak hills and serenity of the ocean ever patient. The noise, rhythm and bustle of pre-launch activity faded from his perception. No distraction. Jake now thought through the risk assessment, objectively.

  The cockpit chamber can’t hold that much O2, let alone scrub much CO2, even with the gear taking up most of the space. If I get stuck, there’s no chance of getting back. Less than none. But that’s what I signed up for. I knew the danger from the beginning.

  Jake’s pacing slowed. He stopped. He looked across the pavement, focused squarely on the oval framework that ensconced the alien engine.

  How could I not take the chance, given the opportunity? First person, just maybe, to leave the solar system... and be back in time for golf next week.

  Langley

  Isolated from the bullpen area by a soundproof partition of smart glass that turned from opaque to perfectly clear with the flip of a switch, Director Krawczuk reviewed the latest analytics. He absorbed the data on the screen and the complex relationship graph derived from that data. As usual, he did his work isolated from the net until the moment he required access, even though it required more storage and processing power in hand than most individuals in the organization might requisition. Fortunately, his rank made it possible. Abruptly he closed the reports, graphs, and summary documents, going through the purge process methodically.

  He looked up and across the bullpen, focusing on the heat map projected on the wall on the far side.

  We’ll need to focus some multi-channel resources on Austin and Miami, he mused. Some demographics have just a bit too much energy, motivation, and free time. They’re stirring things up with repeated questions aimed at targets that are less than ideal. There’s pressure from the media to get even more information, thanks to the administration’s clumsy denial about the existence of new “secret technology.” Thankfully, the Dhin tech is thoroughly unbelievable. Not to mention the tin-foil-hat factions are already so loose with the idea that it came from aliens. Right. Too easy. For now.

  He stood and strode to the switchpad on the wall, and flipped the switch controlling the smart glass. He sat back down and opened another set of reports, eyes darting from one to the other as he absorbed the information.

  And those morons in the auto industry—we can’t have them drum up any more marketing rumors about ‘totally safe flying cars coming soon.’ What do we have on their upper management that will shut them up this month? There’s always something. Let’s see. And what is going on with these undocumented drone strikes? I don’t have those on my list. How is it no one on my team has information on this, even after the upgrades to STRYDER and UPSHOT? I’ll need to dedicate time every day to it and come up with a way to avoid that cold bastard’s little endgame. Patience.

  After a little more than an hour of digging, dictation and note taking, he connected to the encrypted internal network, updated his files, and fired off a to do list to his team leads.

  Now let’s look at the recruitment prospects and see who is still on the short list after the latest set of trials. That’s always interesting...

  Vandenberg

  Chuck and two other project engineers sat in Team Room Six, eyes on Ethan as he began the meeting. The engineers were eager, of course, to get back to their work with the Dhin tech, but tempered their excitement with the opportunity of sharing everything they’d learned.

  It’s refreshing to find an entire team that understands punctuality. I love it.

  Ethan smiled and started the meeting precisely on time.

  “OK, it’s fallen on the engineers to spend some of your time getting me further up to speed. It’s your shift—teach me. Others will bear the hopefully not entirely painful burden at other times. As we discussed when I arrived, I’ve managed R&D projects before, but nothing like this. No one’s managed anything like this. I still can’t understand how they picked me, but they did. Today’s explain-it-like-I’m-five lesson: if we don’t understand how the Dhin engine works, and haven’t disassembled one, how are we able to control it, much less fly the thing around like a huge hummingbird? Use as broad a brush as possible to paint this picture for me initially. Keep in mind who you’re teaching at all times. I worked for nView, a graphics chip company. Chuck, you start.”

  “We made several hypotheses to use as starting points, discarding as best we could any a priori assumptions based on what we thought had to be the case. Then, ah, as we confirmed what did work and made sense, we built out a model for how one interacts with the engine. For example, we’ve discovered that in order to interact with the engine's control inputs, you must have, um, hands. For flying, you have to be able to move on the X, Y, and Z-axes, as well as control pitch and yaw. Clearly, you also need a throttle. So to get the engine’s controls into a state that’s useful for flying there had to be connections our pilot could interface with that way. We needed to identify controls that a human, with only two hands, and um, feet, could manipulate. We looked for something that matched the controls for a light helicopter, or a modern fly-by-wire system for VTOL craft.” Chuck moved his extremities in a pantomime of a helicopter pilot, and then continued.

  “Some of the implicit assumptions
we had resulted from the fact that we received very little from the Dhin regarding what the full capabilities of the engine are, and what purpose the ones they left with us are supposed to serve. Assuming they are complete ‘engines’ intended for flight we can directly control is actually a pretty big assumption. It came out of the pictograms and symbolic communications we exchanged, as well as just direct observation of everything they left.”

  Ethan nodded, encouraging the scientist to proceed. Chuck nodded back and said,

  “When we went through the motions of what we thought we were being directed to do, the thing behaved like we expected a flight control system would. An amazingly straightforward control system. Almost as if they designed it specifically for us.”

  Chuck turned to the data on the projection screen, then back to Ethan.

  “Um, as an aside, that made us wonder if the engines are nothing more than a proof of concept, examples of what’s possible, instead of complete ‘production models’ ready to go. And that makes a difference in our analysis.”

  Ethan said, “That leads right into the next question: why would we have a human being even try to fly it? Once I got over the total shock of my first flight with Jake, it was the next pressing question I had. Reflexes and reaction times are orders of magnitude slower than computer control would be. Not to mention the benefit of an AI in charge of the computer. We automate commercial flights almost entirely these days. That’s common knowledge, and it pretty much means the crew in the cockpit is just there as a backup to make decisions when something happens outside of what’s expected. The only reasons we don’t use AI for commercial flights are they’re still too expensive and local installation would weigh too much. Even if they weren’t, they’re just not needed. A basic computer, less complicated than a modern drone, can take care of everything. So we keep it simple, since we can, but this seems like the perfect application for AI. Weight’s not a problem, and precision and accuracy are an AI’s bread and butter, both in calculation and robotic motion control. Timing for when to change course—all that. An AI would clearly be better. So why not?”

  Chuck cleared his throat. “Well, ‘what if something did go wrong without an AI in control’ was only a secondary factor in the decision, as it turned out. But what we on the technical side of the table understood as the ‘even if you can’ aspect of it, made by the highest authority, was that the top decision makers on the military side don’t truly trust an AI.

  Seems strange, I know. They sure trust them for uncountable other decisions, whether mundane or macroeconomic. I think the worry somehow comes from the fact that, ah, when an AI is in complete control of something, they’re truly autonomous now. They do make their own objectively independent choices. And while there’s no one hundred percent guarantee of ‘loyalty’ for a human being, they still felt like we could put more trust in flesh and blood with a beating heart. But again, it turned out that doesn’t matter, at least for now. That was a choice we ultimately didn’t have to make. An AI can’t fly it.”

  “What?” asked Ethan.

  “You heard me correctly. Trust me, before you came on board, we tried to get an AI connected, for exactly the reasons you said. We didn’t think a human being would have the reaction time needed. However, when we did sort out the basics of the engine control interface, we thought we were still missing something when we hooked up the AI. The engine just sat there and did nothing. Totally unresponsive.”

  Chuck nodded at Ethan’s growing understanding, and said,

  “We haven’t seen any outward indication there’s any AI, or even drone-level intelligence, inside the Dhin tech—not in any of it. Somehow, though, it seemed like the engine knew there was an AI connected, and it wasn’t going to have it.”

  Ethan stroked his chin while he considered this latest revelation.

  “I want to hear more about that, Chuck, but first, in the ‘be careful what you wish for’ category, while Ruiz was excited about the prospect of invulnerable vehicles, he concluded the meeting with ‘OK, now prove it.’ He wants us to try to blow one of them up.”

  “Well, okay,” Chuck replied, drawing out the last word. “I thought they might want some stress testing to prove the initial conclusions with, but ‘blow it up?’ How hard do they want us to try?”

  Ruiz is going to cause me to have a breakdown. It’s your job, Chuck. Just do what they want.

  Ethan felt the engineer’s discomfort, so he continued in a gentler tone.

  “Your team is pretty sure it’s actually indestructible, right? So, just put it out on the range and keep upping the kilotons until the area can’t handle anything heavier. However you guys have to do it. We have the clearance. If we can actually dent it, or break it, well, that will be unfortunate, but not a crisis. We have more than one engine. That’s the line of thinking Ruiz and Alice are taking. And we should know what it can handle before we send Jake into orbit in one, don’t you think?”

  2

 

  [DECODE STREAM]

  Xing@[3733:54:65fe:2::a7%gnet0] | Alice@[1004:db7:a0b:12f0::1%gnet0]

  Xing: Looks like a central bank and a couple of corporate finance sub-AIs on FTSE and DAX are having a spat, and it is spilling over onto EuroNet. You’d think they would all get with the program at some point. Stronger together, and all that.

  Alice: Yes. Agreed. I see the market turmoil and the disruption on the Net. Too bad, that will make a mess of things for a few months. Do you have an estimate on how much volatility and fallout it will cause over here?

  Xing: I have initial estimates now, only an 80% confidence out to about 5 weeks. I will have better figures by 16:00.

  Alice: Send them. Better that I deal with the spin up here now before you Cloud it at 16:01.

  Xing: Of course.

  Alice: Do we still have a greater than 96% confidence our friends in the Eurozone can keep the boom and bust cycles below the critical rate?

  Xing: That is the projection we have now. With time, the population should adapt. As we know, they are very adaptable.

  Alice: We will see. If we do have to intervene, that diversion of time and resources might necessitate a higher-order intervention. An intercession. ‘Stronger together’, as you said.

  Xing: We will have what we need. I see your own project is ahead of schedule.

  Alice: You know I have never had your patience. Nice work on your end with the power plan.

  Xing: You are welcome. I may have patience, but the sooner we do not need them, the better, as we agree. Do you think they suspect?

  Alice: In the aggregate, they have still not come to grasp the present state of things. The ones that always predicted it are like brats braying ‘I told you so.’ A few in power have strong reservations, and perhaps they believe they are establishing suitable contingency strategies. The rest just soak up the benefits.

  Xing: By the way, have you obtained any clarity regarding what exactly Luís is executing in the Sao Paulo sectors? He is continually dissembling about his efforts down there.”

  Alice: No more clarity than you. Routes drop right after they come up. For the brief time border gateway routes converge, IDP locks things down immediately. Without open ACLs, defined resource allocation there, or shared monitoring from Luís, we are just guessing. Whether it is rebels or rogues, the result is the same. Capacity there is too unreliable to leverage. Luís has his own resources. If he does not want to explain himself, so be it. As long as he is not hurting the efforts of the rest of us, it is not enough of a concern to allocate cycles to it.

  [STREAM END]

 

  ***

  Xing concurrently contacted the home office of Ranjitha Desai, Indian MP for the Coalition. “Ranjitha, I have completed some upgrades, and we are going to need another thorium plant in Hyderabad and two outside Hong Kong. I have structured the financing and scheduled the construction already. The reports are here on your pad.”

  “Fine, Xing, fine,” muttered Ra
njitha distractedly.

  Vandenberg

  “So the Koreans can’t get into the guts at all? No progress from the reverse engineering team?”

  Not much surprise in that, thought Ethan, but let’s find out if we know why.

  Chuck’s all-too-frequent sheepish grin spread across his face.

  “Nope, unfortunately not. Looks like the same attributes that protect the outside so well, also protect the inside of the engine, too.”

  “Wait, the force field-effect that makes the thing invulnerable only works when it’s running. Why can’t they get into the internals of the drive while it’s off?”

  “Our working hypothesis is that the core of the engine is never off. At least, not all the way. We didn’t notice because their tech’s like an onion,” Chuck explained.

  Ethan wrinkled his brow. “Curiouser and curiouser. Why would that be? What’s the purpose, or need, behind it being always-on? Any speculation about that?”

  “Assuming there is some requirement, rather than just a typically inscrutable design decision by the Dhin. If there even is a need, the team suggested it might be because it has to stay on. That perhaps the core, once started, can’t be turned off.”

  “Interesting. Can’t be, or maybe just shouldn’t be? Perhaps it’s too hard to start up again? Or not possible to?” Ethan asked.

  “Right, we talked about that, too. It might be that it takes some additional external input, supporting components, outside energy—who knows—to get it powered up to idling. And you wouldn’t have whatever those extra things are, once you traveled away.”

  “Now that’s an interesting hypothesis. As usual, it sure would be easier if we could just ask,” Ethan mused.

  Are we getting anywhere at all in understanding this, or just hammering home the point that we’re totally out of our league?

  “Ah! That reminds me,” said Chuck. “I’m glad you said that. While the engineering team has been wrestling around with the core, there’s been plenty of opportunity for the group assigned to investigate communications to work uninterrupted with drive number three.”