by Ivan Kal
“It is human nature. As long as everything works, they don’t care. I have always dealt fairly with everyone. Those in the government that know keep it hidden because it suits them. Olympus keeps the economy running, making their jobs easier. As for the rest, they ignore our expansion because dealing with us brings them money and our removal would mean losing their wealth. As for those ignorant, they hear what the media tells them and believe them; they have no desire to learn of things that don’t concern them as long as they have a comfortable life, which Concordis provides.”
“That’s insane,” she said.
“Yes, it is. And that is the way most everyone in the world operates. They follow the design set before them. They finish school, they get a job, they marry, they have children, and they die. They don’t care about anything outside their own little world. I have created Olympus for people who wish to live a different kind of life. A life that is a journey, a path, where they never stop but always try to reach for that goal at the end.”
“So you believe that having a family is wrong?” she asked. That part irked her a bit; she’d always wanted a family of her own.
“No, you misunderstood me. I have nothing against family; what I despise is monotony. It’s suffocating. It destroys good people, and it prevents progress. How many married people do you know that have been together for years, who say they love each other, and yet they are miserable?”
She knew a lot; many of her colleagues were married, and she could see that they had lost something. Not because they were married, but because of the thing Tomas had mentioned—monotony. Routine. That was the probably the biggest reason why people cheated, why they did things they wouldn’t otherwise. Not that everyone was like that, just most of them.
“There are many people within Olympus that are married,” Tomas continued, “but every single person in Olympus is there because they are like me. They crave something more than the ordinary everyone else holds as the utmost achievement in life. They want to do things that no one else has done, to be part of something else even if they themselves don’t know what it is. They hear that call within themselves, and they have the courage to reach beyond the path that they have been put on. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said, and she really did understand. It took this conversation to make her see that the past months while she was working at Olympus had been the happiest days of her life. She had always felt the thing that Tomas described, but until now she just hadn’t realized it. She had been searching for something, jumping from school to school getting degrees in many areas, always searching for something she herself didn’t realize she needed. And now it seemed like she’d finally found it with Olympus. “I understand.”
Tomas smiled. “I know that you do. That’s why I hired you in the first place.”
“We’ve gone off topic. Why did you really start Olympus? You have accumulated power, and yet you don’t do anything with it. All you do is work and expand. And I have access now, I know how much you work every day; you don’t indulge yourself in the slightest. Anyone else with your kind of wealth would be spending it as fast as he could earn it. So tell me the real reason for creating Olympus. You have invested in every kind of research man could think of.”
Tomas looked at the wall to the green field and blue sky projected there; he seemed to be studying it closely. She waited patiently until he suddenly turned his eyes and locked them with hers.
“My first memory is of the clear night sky. I was in the wilderness with my parents—this was just before they died. I don’t remember why or where. But I do remember the stars; they are my first and clearest childhood memory. Ever since that moment, I have been enamored with them. I have always wanted to reach them, to grasp them in my hand. You asked me why I built Olympus. I built it to fulfill my childhood dream, to go among the stars. Over time, as I grew, that dream evolved from my reaching the stars to me taking humanity with me. Everything I have ever done was for that purpose. THe ship we found has just accelerated my plans, but Olympus is my gateway to the stars.”
Seo-yun was struck by the intensity of his words. Coming from anyone else it would had seemed just a childish aspiration, a thing you might say if someone asked what your dream job was. But coming from Tomas it had an entirely different feel. This was the man who had built a worldwide empire, who could have ruled the world if he so wished. A man who had devoted his whole being to the purpose of fulfilling his dream.
“And what happens when you fulfill your dream, when you reach the stars?” she asked.
Tomas smiled yet again, but this time his smile seemed lighter, warm. “You, Seo-yun, better than anyone, should know the size of the universe. The number of stars in the sky. My dream is one that can never be fulfilled, a goal that can never be reached. And that is precisely why it is a dream worth reaching for.”
Hearing his words, for the first time in a long time Seo-yun felt like her life was on a path that was right for her. She looked at Tomas, and in his green eyes she saw a glint of something, a drive unlike anything she had ever seen. She looked at his face; his words were that of a madman, and perhaps he was a bit mad. He had to be, to do what he had done all for a childhood dream. There were easier ways to reach the stars; he could have become an astronaut. But instead, he’d conquered the world. And decided to bring all of humanity with him on the journey towards his dream.
Chapter Six
“So, what are your plans?” she asked.
“I have many plans, few of which are already in motion, with others that will be in the close future, and even more that are still a long way from now. But you don’t need to worry about them, you will be included in every major move I make. For now, I need you to oversee your current project and make sure that we get as much as we can from it, in as short a period of time as possible. Tell me what have you learned.”
Seo-yun took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We have learned a lot, but let me start with the technology.”
Tomas nodded for her to proceed. She reached into her coat inner pocket and took out her personal datapad. She swiped a few times across its surface and brought the list she’d prepared before the meeting.
“Well, we ran tests on the ship and some of the technology is familiar to us. More advanced, for sure, but not all that much. And some of it is so far ahead of us that we can’t figure out what the hell it does or how. The ship is a mystery. It’s like someone took all kinds of different technologies from multiple sources and just put them all together in one small ship. From the ship’s databases we know that it is a small scout ship that was carried around by a bigger class of ship. We have not yet figured out their classifications, but the ship that carried this one was listed as a long-range explorer ship. The ship we recovered has only one weapon type, a pair of laser emitters on the top of the ship.
“They can be retracted into the hull, which was where they were when we found the ship. The lasers aren’t all that more advanced than ours, other than that they have a lot more power. Next, the ship’s power source. It seems to be a type of antimatter reactor. One so advanced that we have no idea how they managed it. From what little we gathered, it works on the principle of matter-antimatter collision, where the reactor produces antimatter-and-matter collisions on demand and then contains the energy released while converting it into a state the ship can use for power. It seems that they used this power source for most everything, from powering their stations to cities and ships, which indicates that it was relatively safe and that they have a greater understanding of this technology. The reactor is made so that it would last forever, and from what we could see, it runs perfectly and needs no maintenance whatsoever.”
“There is no chance of it blowing us up if we mess with it?” Tomas asked.
“Not that we can tell, though we only understand the basics of how it works. There is a chance of course that we could cause a reactor meltdown. But it is negligible, and we are taking all the precautions we can think of.”
Tomas nodded and motioned for her to continue.
“The ship drives are so far an enigma. The databases have several types of drive systems listed, but since that part of the data is badly corrupted, we have no idea which system is installed on the ship, and we can’t make heads or tails of it. And we don’t want to risk turning them on, since we can’t even figure out if they are still operational. The ship’s hull is made from a lightweight composite that is reasonably strong, but we have no idea what it is. It’s not as strong as some of our strongest metal alloys, but the weight-to-strength ratio is much better. And when I say strength, I mean the balance between strength, hardness, and toughness. We could have opened the door with the explosives if you hadn’t instructed us not to use excessive force.
Then there are the ship’s sensors and communication relays; they have been severely damaged and have deteriorated over time from the lack of maintenance, just as most of the other computer-based systems have. The relays themselves seem to be mostly operational, it’s just that the programs that guide them are failing. Basically, most of the ship’s computer systems programs are corrupted to one degree or another. The databases and the AI seem to have gotten away lightly compared to the other systems. Judging from this, we discern that they have been made better than the other systems. And the last thing we found is a small fabricator, which is where I chose to focus most of our efforts.”
“A fabricator? What is that?” Tomas interrupted.
“Well, the closest thing we have are 3D printers, though this is more advanced. You basically feed the fabricator raw ingredients, then program what you want and it constructs it. You can build things from simple metal plates to computers or clothes in a shorter period of time than it would take to do it conventionally. We believe that it works by utilizing nanotechnology, meaning that basically billions of nanorobots take the material provided and build things that the user programs into the computer. I have taken the liberty of assigning a few members from Olympus’s nanotechnology department to the project.”
“I wondered why you requested them,” he said.
“Why didn’t you ask?”
“I told you that you were in charge. I didn’t want to appear as if I was looking over your shoulder,” he responded with a smile.
“Even though you did. Look, I mean,” she said, a soft smile playing at her lips.
“From time to time,” he said.
“Of course.” In truth, it didn’t bother her at all. She was new at the job and was in charge of a critical project. She would have been surprised if he hadn’t been keeping an eye on her. She scrolled down her datapad and then continued with her report.
“Now, on to the data. We have learned their common—or as they referred to it, trade language—with the help of the ship’s AI. The Union consisted of multiple races, but practically all data was recorded in the trade language. There are some small parts that are in other languages, but those are mainly untranslated versions of manuals; there are copies in the trade language of most every one of them. We managed to convert their time units to ours—one cycle is roughly two of our years. The AI mentioned that the Union was created some sixteen thousand cycles ago, so that puts its creation at approximately thirty-two thousand years ago. Now, keep in mind that before then, most of the member races had already been in space for thousands of years. The oldest of those, and one of the founding members, was a race called Unuura. They were in space for five thousand years before the founding of the Union, and their history goes a lot further back, before they even left their home world.”
“That is a bit unreal. I mean, that is a big chunk of time and it sounds impressive, but from what you tell me about their technology, it doesn’t seem impressive at all. We have barely left our world and already we can either understand their technology or already have something similar,” Tomas said, frowning.
“Yes, it seems that is the case with every Union race, and I believe I have the answer as to why that is,” she said.
“Why?” Tomas asked, confused.
“Let me start at the beginning. After we converted their time units to ours and noticed that for all the time they spent in space their technology was not as advanced as we would have expected, we started looking at the history of the Union, and then the history of the individual races. Almost immediately, we noticed that all the races had a rather large period of time in between technological discoveries. There would be a new discovery followed by technological advancement, and then a period of hundreds to thousands of years where nothing new was introduced. They would, of course, improve the designs of the existing technology, but nothing new was produced. Then something would happen, a cultural trigger of some kind. And they would advance again, and so on. The only period where there seemed to be a faster pace of advancement was when they reached space and met with other races.”
“Have you figured out why that is?” Tomas asked.
“We aren’t sure, but we have a theory. It was actually Laura, our chief computer expert, who noticed it first.” She paused for a moment, trying to find the best way to present the theory, but she must have paused for too long, because Tomas got impatient and interrupted her.
“What?” he said impatiently.
Seo-yun sighed and said simply, “War.”
“War?” Tomas asked, confused. “What does war have to do with anything?”
She eyed him for a short second and then said, “Think about it. Humanity has waged wars since its birth. Whether against nature or against one another. There is almost no period since we started recording history in which we haven’t fought a war in one way or another. Even now, after the most destructive war we’ve ever had, we still squabble among ourselves. Every one of our technological advances had come from preparing for war, or immediately after, when we needed to get an edge for the next one. Of course, there have been advances that haven’t been motivated by the military. But even those are in a way conceived for war. War against our competitors, to get an edge on a market, to earn wealth, or take over your opponent’s business.”
“And it isn’t so in this Union?” he asked.
“Not at all. First, you need to understand where and how these races evolved. Most every one of the Union races evolved to be either on the top of the food chain or outside of it. They evolved with no competition, and as soon as they reached a point where they explored all of their world, they formed a community. They were unified from the start; there was never anything like what Earth has with multiple governments. The only time they had something like that was when they were isolated by land and unable to communicate. Not that they didn’t fight amongst themselves. They did. But it rarely came to bloodshed, and when it did it was quickly resolved.”
She paused for a moment before continuing.
“They had small infightings, nothing on our all-out world war scale. So they felt no need to change for extended periods of time; they were safe from the environment, nature, and other life on their worlds. When they did change, it was to make their lives better. Their medical technology is leagues ahead of ours, at least in terms of cures for diseases and prevention of them. We are ahead of them in other areas, invasive procedures and such. Based on what we’ve read in the databases since the ship has no medical capabilities. When they went into space, it was because their populations had finally exceeded their world’s limits. One other reason for the time it took them to reach this point is that they mostly reproduced a lot slower than us.
“There were a few races that reproduced as fast or faster than we do, and those were generally younger races, so there is something there as well. When they met other races, there was rarely any conflict between them. And those were again periods where their technology seemed to leap ahead. But any wars were quickly resolved, since trade was much more profitable for both sides. There was one warlike race in the vicinity of one of the founding members of the Union territory; they started to conquer planets from other races. And it was this event th
at pushed the other races to form the Union.
“The race that attacked was called Minoolos by the Union, though their real name was unpronounceable by most other races, so they made their own name. It means ‘those who destroy,’ and the race was actually a lot younger than most Union races. It had already been warring in space for hundreds of years before coming upon the Union territory. They were only slightly more advanced than the Union races and were attacking multiple races at the same time, until the Unuura called for an alliance that later became the Union. The attacked races shared technology and researched new ones in order to defend themselves. And they had a lot more manpower between themselves than the Minoolos had. And as soon as they closed the technology gap, they pushed them back and reclaimed their worlds. They formed the Union and started expanding their territory—they even accepted the Minoolos into the Union later. In time, the Union became an enormous behemoth with the spherical territory of more than 700 light years in radius, with many thin finger like extensions from the center, and as such were not a soft target for warlike races. And with that safety in numbers, there again came a period of little technological advancement. They didn’t have competition. They traded between themselves and outside races. There were new technologies introduced from time to time by trading or inclusion of other races into the Union, but nothing really age-changing. And then we come to the reason why this scout ship was here.”
“Why?” he asked.
“The Union was attacked,” she responded.
“Why is that relevant to them coming here?”
“They were looking for habitable planets far away from their territory to settle,” she said.
“They were losing?” Tomas asked.
She nodded. “Yes, and badly. They were attacked by an unknown force. At the beginning, they didn’t even know what was happening. They were losing contact with planets, and every ship they sent to investigate failed to return. So they assembled a fleet and sent it to investigate. What returned was only one badly damaged ship. It reported that they were attacked by an unknown enemy with superior technology. And from the few records we found in the databases, they were far more advanced than the Union, more on the lines with what we expected to find with this ship. The Union tried diplomacy, but the attackers didn’t even bother to respond. They just kept taking planets, killing their populations and settling their own. The Union tried to close the gap technologically, but they were too far behind; the only thing they could do was slow them down in hope that someday they might match them. By the time the Union finally realized that they had no chance, they had been fighting for 400 years and had lost more than 60% of their territory. So they decided to save as many of their people as they could. They sent survey ships in the opposite direction from the invaders, in hope of finding an unpopulated part of the galaxy where they could start again. The ship that carried the one we found on Earth was such a ship. They were here about thirteen thousand years ago, and had been traveling for around a hundred years. The race that was in charge of the ship was one of the longer-lived races of the Union—they could reach five thousand years of age.”
