“We’ve met,” said Anatoly with a respectful nod in the old engineer’s direction.
“You are both Straifers, correct?” Toya pressed. They had to be—the woman looked so like Esper, right down to her pear shape and short-cropped hair.
Toya offered her guests seats, then handed out fresh-baked cookies before settling down herself. Still, Caznal did not speak. “We have kept an important secret for decades now, and besides the two of us, I.C.C. is the only entity left alive who shares it. Before I pass into the great beyond, I need to pass that secret on to you. I have to tell you about your biological parents, and why the convoy owes them everything . . .”
Epilogue
I.C.C.: Old Salts and New Songs
August 27, 44 Relaunch
4574 CE
Slicer was a big, fat-bellied ship, capable of housing a single Web device the size of Mira all on its own. For now, it held the Nest. On Earth, specialty scaffolding had held the strange ship in place, so that the long, dangling piping on its underside would not flatten beneath its own weight. Now, on Slicer, gravity cyclers—much smaller and refined than the convoy would have been able to build without Earth’s input—kept the alien vessel suspended above the decking.
Beneath it, Caznal stood staring up into the tangle of nonsensical-seeming engineering that was its outer hull. This was supposed to be her sleep cycle, but it seemed the whirring of her own brain kept her perpetually awake these days. She was elderly now, in her eighty-seventh year, and while Dr. Sato Miu had lived to one hundred and six in Ship City, Caznal was the oldest person to ever serve aboard a Convoy Seven mission.
Noumenon Infinitum: that was what they’d decided to name their new mission. Some had agreed to it because they felt the unknowable—the unmeasurable—was infinite. Others liked it because it simply implied that their first mission, Noumenon, would never truly end.
It is good to be in space again, I.C.C. thought often. With a new mission, a new collective purpose.
Of course, I.C.C.’s individual purpose hadn’t changed. It still had human charges, still tended to their productivity and well-being.
And Caznal’s well-being depended on an adequate number of REM cycles.
But, while I.C.C. thought it was unhealthy for someone of Caznal’s advanced age to neglect sleep, Caznal thought it her duty to work for as many hours as she was able. “I could not do my duty and die, so I must do my duty until I die,” she’d said many times, though she always chuckled at herself like it was the first.
The lowest structures on the Nest hovered a foot above the old woman’s head. She reached up with a wrinkled-and-spotted hand, caressing the blunt end of a particularly scraggly tube.
“Inter Convoy Computer?”
“Yes, Caznal?”
“Can you bring up model sixty-two again on the holographic base? I want to see what happens with sudden reverse directionalization.”
I.C.C. resisted the urge to tell her she’d run that simulation hundreds of times already. It wasn’t that Caz had forgotten—she was still mentally quite capable—it was that she apparently thought one more time might change the results.
The AI had grown fond of Caz over the years. It was strange to see someone so extremely elderly, and so extremely full of life.
There was no one aboard like Caznal, and though she had already been cloned, there would never be another human being in existence who had done what she had done, seen what she had seen.
As requested, I.C.C. turned on the projection platform nearest Caznal. The base was twelve feet by twelve feet, and a detailed holographic model of the Nest now hovered in ghostly detail above it.
“I would like to summon another engineer to aid you,” I.C.C. said, as Caz slid out from under the Nest and sidled over to the base.
“Fine, fine,” the old woman said, manipulating the projection, tilting it this way and that. “But I do not need anyone. I am simply . . . thinking. Pondering. For me, not for anyone else.”
That was a familiar sentiment aboard the convoy these days. They, as a society, had spent so much time in service to their original mission—to an Earth they did not know—that they were now determined to endeavor primarily for themselves. Not just as individuals, but as a community. There was a renewed commitment to each other, born out of shared history and fervent loyalty, that I.C.C. found endearing.
It was sure that was part of the board’s reason for keeping Earth in the dark on their Nest-related discoveries. They weren’t just worried Earth would deny them a new mission, they also wanted to keep the knowledge for themselves. It might have seemed selfish to anyone who hadn’t spent centuries in space, but I.C.C. understood. Their prospects had been dictated to them for generations, and this was their first real chance to pursue self-actualization on their own terms.
“Do you have a preference?” I.C.C. asked.
“For what?”
“Which colleague I should contact?”
“Oh.” Caznal shrugged, then looked up at one of I.C.C.’s cameras with a twinkle in her eye. “Call Jamal Kaeden.”
I.C.C. was pleased. Both it and Caznal shared an affection for the Kaeden lines.
Jamal was asleep, but responsive. He promised to take a shuttle to Slicer immediately.
The new genetic surveys had shuffled the crew like a deck of cards, shifting them from their legacy departments to new stations and eliminating the white-suit positions altogether. While some lines retained their original workstations, Jamal’s line would not play steward to the AI again. Earth had determined his greatest potential lay in engineering, and I.C.C. could not argue. Jamal Kaeden the First had created the only truly artificial intelligence left in human existence, and the line’s value as inventors and mechanical thinkers could not be denied.
“Are you ready to run the simulation now?” Caznal asked.
“What new variables would you like me to include?” I.C.C. prompted.
“None, not yet. I am looking for . . . something.”
The convoy had been so eager to leave Earth again, so sure they would solve the problem of the Nest’s gravity, and yet . . . here was Caznal decades later, still prodding the riddle. They had identified the cyclers, but not the mechanisms by which the gravitons were so finely controlled. Cyclers gathered gravitons, but the bosons still had to be further manipulated in order to create usable gravitational waves. Because gravitational waves moved at the speed of light, as long as they were constantly generated at the desired amplitude, frequency, and wavelength, the effect was a steady field.
So what part of the ship was devoted to creating and maintaining upwards of a quadrillion quantum gravitational fields at a time?
They had yet to even pinpoint the method by which traditional artificial gravity was applied. If they couldn’t figure out how the Nest’s occupants had so much as maintained their equivalent of one g-force . . .
So, for the last few years, Caz had run gravitational field models like a forensic scientist attempting to piece together the events of a murder from evidence left at the crime scene. If she could isolate even one circuit path—prove that two portions of the ship were electrically connected—then she might be able to pinpoint their purpose and functionality. Perhaps they could bypass locating the mechanisms by which the circuits were formed and simply . . . turn the ship on.
No circuits meant no power. But how could the supercyclers function—and therefore create the circuits—without power?
“This is the worst kind of chicken-and-egg scenario,” Caznal had once said.
Now, she watched the simulation for model sixty-two intently. The moment the field directionalization was flipped, there was a spike in hydrogen compression, but even an immediate reversal did not maintain the process.
She ran a dozen more simulations before Jamal arrived.
“Hey, Caz. I.C.C. said you could use some help.”
“The Inter Convoy Computer thinks I am too old to work nights.”
I.C.C. felt no need to coun
ter her.
“Well, I’m not exactly a spring chick, either, but it apparently thinks I can do just fine without a full night’s sleep.”
“Apologies,” I.C.C. said.
“It’s my fault,” Caznal broke in. “It wanted to call someone and I asked for you.”
“Well, no use squandering the minutes. What’ve you got?”
While the two crew members adjusted the parameters of the simulations, I.C.C. studied Jamal’s face. He had a distinguishing scar over the bridge of his nose, which he’d gotten in a mishap his first month as an apprentice.
The AI thought of Rail, then, of the many scars he’d borne, and of the lessons he’d tried to convey to the convoy. Those lessons had taken so much time to seed, to root. How was it that such clear-cut sentiments—like trusting one another, or judging people by their own actions and no one else’s—were so difficult for a community to adopt? Individuals could change course faster than a society, of course. They could immediately overcome a problem, or quickly move on from a tragedy. But sometimes . . .
It thought of Jamal the Third, the little boy who’d lost his grandfather figure. Diego had tried to teach him love through loyalty, but all Jamal had learned was loss. And that loss had torn through him, dictated the progression of his life. He hadn’t been able to change direction, no matter how many people had loved him.
Someone once said that technological development didn’t progress in a straight line. But neither did societal development. Those first clones, when they came aboard for the very first launch, had been so hopeful for their people, so sure they were different than the humans stuck on Earth. They’d thought themselves civilization at its peak. Such an outlook had been their pride, and their downfall. The Pit had arisen from arrogance as much as fear. Once the crew members had thought prejudice a folly of the past, they’d given it a way in.
But they’d pulled themselves out of their dark times. They were still recovering, but watching Jamal and Caznal now, I.C.C. was filled with new hope.
“How about we overlay models twelve through eighteen, forty-one through forty-nine, and sixty-two through the remainders?” Jamal suggested.
Caz agreed, and I.C.C. applied the changes. The modeled hydrogen’s pressure and temperature fluctuated greatly—the film inside the walls rippled for half a moment, a line or two that might have been an electrical connection semiformed.
“These together imply the initial point of graviton control is most likely here,” Jamal said, somewhat bewildered, pointing at the ship’s empty bay. “But that doesn’t make any sense. There’s nothing there.”
“I think . . . I think . . .” said Caz, like the ideas swirling through her mind were wispy and she was having a hard time grasping onto them. “Yes . . . Do not you see?”
“See what?”
“What should be in this area? What is missing?”
“Caz . . .” Jamal pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s way too late—or early, whatever—for riddles.”
Caznal waved that aside, her face aglow with a new idea. “I know, I know, But we . . . Look.” She took three sweeping steps, positioning herself underneath the Nest once more, twirling in a strange, childlike display. “What is the initial point of control on a manual light switch? You. Or me. It is a person, not a mechanism. Correct?” She prodded the tip of one filament with a finger, then flicked it with the back of her nail as though it were the switch she spoked of. “Do you see? What if it is the same for this?”
“You’re suggesting that the Nest’s occupants—”
“Could control their own gravitational fields!” she said giddily. “That could explain where the initial connections come from. The aliens could manipulate gravitons biologically—essentially flipping the switch or turning the key.”
Jamal looked as though he wished to remain skeptical, but there was a new brightness to his face. “So they wouldn’t have to rely on cyclers to keep them grounded to their decking because they could consciously dictate their own degrees of gravitational attraction.”
“Yes! And they could construct the primary circuitry required to allow power to flow to their supercyclers and their computer—the Babbage Engine—which then could potentially run the more complex calculations needed to maintain and change the rest of the hydrogen connections.” She threw her arms in the air, triumphant.
Jamal didn’t appear to share Caznal’s enthusiasm. Instead, he seemed to be carefully processing what it all meant, and I.C.C. thought he looked troubled. “So,” he said after a long moment. “If you’re right, then there is nothing for us to activate. We don’t have the component—the biological component—that actually makes the Nest function.”
“Correct,” said Caz, still high on her eureka moment.
“But, doesn’t that mean that there is no way that we can make the ship work? We don’t know what those primary connections are—and we don’t have the technology to create them from scratch even if we did—so we can’t activate the Babbage Engine, we can’t infiltrate their navigation, we can’t follow their flight path back to their home world.”
Caznal’s joy abated. Her arms fell. “If we keep modeling, we should be able to pinpoint the—”
“But then what? What does it matter if we don’t have the ability to practically apply what we’ve learned? You’re saying it’s impossible.”
“It is not impossible,” I.C.C. interjected. “You are an engineer. It is your job to create new things. This simply requires you to invent an artificial substitute for the biological variable.”
“Right,” Jamal said, as though the AI were proving his point. “We’d have to engineer an equivalent. From scratch, and with the strength and precision of the fields we’re talking about . . .”
Caznal smiled. “You know what else was impossible? Flight. Breaking the sound barrier. Outrunning light. Telepathy. Interstellar travel. Look where we are now.”
Jamal hung his head, a conciliatory smile twisting the corner of his lips. “It’s going to take . . . who knows how long? Decades? We’ll probably have to turn Zetta into a supercycler, and most of Hvmnd’s computing power will need to be redirected—”
“Yes!” Caznal said, clapping her hands. “That is the stuff! We will need to get a team together in the morning, as soon as possible—”
But a sadness slumped Jamal’s shoulders. “Caz, it could take decades.”
“I know,” she said bluntly, not sure what Jamal was getting at. “But what do we have on this new journey to LQ Pyx, if not time?”
“I know, it’s just . . . I thought we were close. I thought you were close.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked away.
I.C.C. understood: Jamal was lamenting the fact that Caznal could not, logically, see the end of this new endeavor. It was equally possible that this iteration of Jamal might not see it come to fruition either.
Caz pursed her lips once she grasped Jamal’s hesitancy. “Are you sad for me?” Her tone carried a faux harshness. “Do not be sad for me.” She pointed a finger, waggling it in Jamal’s direction. “I very possibly just discovered that an alien intelligence can biologically manipulate its own gravitational fields. You should not dare to feel sad for me. Besides,” she added warmly, “We might not be close, but we are certainly closer.”
Jamal snickered at that and rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re right. I’m sorry, you’re right.”
“Damn right I am right,” she said with glee. “Now, who else do we wake up?”
I.C.C. scanned the rotation rosters, attempting to gauge which other crew members would be amenable to joining in the late-night discovery.
While it worked, I.C.C. watched as Caznal clapped Jamal on the back, her smile wide and shining. “Noumenon Infinitum!” she cried. “Here we come!”
Acknowledgments
In the life of a convoy member, there is seriousness and sadness, discovery and struggle. But there is also hope and joy. This is one of my joyful moments—getting to thank the multitu
des who had a hand in getting this book into your hands. And there are multitudes, which means I will inevitably leave someone out, and I apologize.
Joys can be expressed through quiet ruminations, via treatises, or in lists and charts, tables and graphs. But I think even I.C.C. believes that playfulness is one of the most effective methods by which to express joy.
With that said, you need to know that what follows is rather silly. While I am a serious writer who wrote a serious book, I have promised never to take myself too seriously. And at this moment, I cannot properly express my exuberance with a few well-formatted paragraphs of thank yous. If you would like to preserve a previously formed image of me as a no-nonsense, purely pensive individual, I’ll forgive you if you look away.
Now, I give you “You Helped Support this Writer,” parody lyrics set (more or less) to the tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which just so happens to be Dr. Leonard McCloud’s favorite song. Reggie got really tired of it during his graduate years, but the song still made it into the convoy’s entertainment archives. Hum along and enjoy:
Family first on the way: Mom and Dad, Austin Ray,
Husband Alex, he’s my guy, best crit partner on the fly
Sara, Jason, in-laws too, Olivia, Wendy-n-crew
Paternal side, maternal side, all-y’all in-tow
You created this writer
You’ve encouraged her
Since the words first lured her
You created this writer
I didn’t hide it
and you didn’t fight it
Next up, book team. Harper Voyager, what a dream.
DongWon Song, David P., Tracy Wilson, Phon B.
Steven Messing’s cover game, Priyanka, Serena Wang
Taryn O., Anna Will, page to page, all a thrill!
Shawn N., Angela C., work promos with Pam Jaffee
Owen C., Mumatz M., art department makes it glam
Liate Stehilk, books with flare, publisher extraordinaire
Noumenon Page 39
