Digital Venous

by Richard Gohl

  The first fleet will be comprised of some five ships each carrying several thousand Napeans, and further building and maintenance will be provided by a small number of Greenhill workers. Remember, the goal for us all is freedom. The freedom to walk where we chose in a natural world.

  Pato had the job of addressing the issue of those not travelling this time around:

  Remaining Napeans can carry on as usual. The predicted sun storm is not expected to affect Napea. As a precaution, one or two levels under the five northern transdomes will be available for shelter should temperatures soar beyond recommended levels.

  Jeffery concluded: All craft in the second fleet will be in the protected zone for the CME incident and the next journey is scheduled for departure in exactly five months from now. Thank you for your attention. Top twenty questions will be answered in an ETP posting tomorrow evening.

  Maximillian Jeffery. Edmund Pato. Matt Magellan.”

  That night, after the address, the Napeans came out into the night, brightly lit by a nearly full moon, to marvel at Sirius, their new home. It was, of course, impossibly cold, and Napeans were about to scurry back in through the respective city gates when word spread through the crowd that there was a series of tiny black spots crawling across the surface of the moon. “Mining tanks,” someone suggested. “Yes,” it was agreed, they were “giant Lunatex vehicles!” But then the spots could be seen continuing, over the sharp silver edge of the moon, right across out into the dark night sky—they were darker than the Milky Way backdrop. The spaceships Emerald, Opal, Jade, Sapphire, and Pearl. The fleet was waiting, docked at the top of the elevator.

  Napeans returned to their homes that night, and for the first time in many years, very few of them immediately followed their usual amusements. There was pause for reflection. Something had happened. Should they be worried? A flurry of electrotelepathic communication across Napea gave rise to a number of uncomfortable problems and questions that were soon resolved and answered.

  Some of them would leave and the others would follow later. The most sedentary people in history were finally going somewhere.

  Chapter 50

  Shane’s List

  SHANE WAS TO oversee the implementation of the first fleet project—the selection of the five hundred Subs and their relocation to space. The Service had already notified the nine thousand Napeans travelling and the ships on which they would be travelling. There was no uprising. There was no rebellion. Napeans believed what they were told—in fact, many seemed relieved not to be taking the voyage –and were happy to take their chances on Earth and wait for the next exodus.

  Alia had tried again to publish information to the network but, not wanting to put Sylvana and her family at risk, their options were limited. Nothing worked. All writable and post areas on the network were closed.

  In the end it was Sylvana’s idea: to print flyers and drop throughout Napea. They simply read:

  THERE WILL BE NO SECOND VOYAGE TO REMUS;

  THE NEXT SUN FLARE WILL BE STRONGER THAN FIRST. DEMAND THE TRUTH BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

  The messages were so ineffective that the Service didn’t even bother looking for the perpetrators. An ETP news release stated that individuals in the real world had made another attempt at sabotage, reporting that a selfish few were attempting to stop progress, again.

  There was such an air of excitement across Napea that the incident went largely unnoticed and at that point Alia realized that the best option was going to be making sure that remaining real people were as well-prepared for the future as they could be.

  Although the research had seemed conclusive, that that the approaching second solar flare was due in two months—sixty years after the first one—and the next would be in ten years’ time, it was possible that these predictions were wrong. The dates were not the issue—it was the radiation severity. Even still, she thought, life had continued underground despite people saying over one hundred years ago that the human race would never recover. It did recover. Maybe it would again.

  Shane, Charles and the Greenhill Napean Captain had the brief to select Subs who were young and capable of hard work. There were to be an equal number of male and female and a strong contingent of children. This could include Ryan. Over the following week the three of them produced the list of 500. The remaining people were being left without a choice to whatever fate the sun held for them.

  Chapter 51

  The Mortet Funnel

  DISCOVERING “DARK MATTER” in the universe was like discovering the existence of “air” on Earth.

  The expression, ‘dark matter’ was found to be too general a term and was not used after midway through the 21 century. Although hugely abundant in space, on Earth it ebbed and flowed through the atmosphere like some kind of invisible tidal river. It didn’t react with light, magnetism or electricity or other known atomic forces but eventually, with the discovery of the metal Amenium, useful parts of it were extracted and contained.

  Dark matter was found to be made up of a number of different elements, one of which was axion. A scientist called James Mortet discovered a way of extracting it from the air. The spinning of an Amenium funnel was found to create a high-powered vortex of dark matter. Mega-compression was achieved when the diameter of the funnel was decreased and flipped. This implosion created axion matter and when this material began to spiral it gave rise to mortific energy, a force equal in strength to nuclear fission. Any object sucked into the mortet funnel would be nullified into a collection of vaporized elements.

  In terms of temperament, Axion was like its parent material: dark black. It was the god of destruction in a jar. One scientist, getting too close, lost an arm to a mortet funnel. His hand simply started to disappear and the effect began to spread. A desperate colleague amputated the arm at the shoulder to save the rest of his body from being turned into star dust.

  When the a technique for holding and transporting axion matter was perfected, engineers found a way of jamming it into the ship’s hull; insulating those inside from the ravages of time and space. Many early attempts at high speed travel had ended with disturbing results such as temporal schisms between body and mind and or body and body. A vortex of mortific energy was monstrous however when contained correctly in the walls of a space-ship, it offered high speed protection, displacing meteoroids and other previously hazardous space flotsam, like a force field.

  The American designed ships hanging 150 kilometers above the Napean city were capable of reaching Light Speed. This meant a 3 year journey to reach the planets in the vicinity of the Sirius or Alpha Centauri Star systems.

  Through Telesync the local universe had been mapped to a point where it was now safe to fly through massive sectors it at extremely high speeds. The wider neighborhood was made up mainly of voids; huge expanses of nothing. This was the general norm. Occasionally there might be a large flat sheet of stars, in one area, or a filament of galaxies in another. Like a swimming pool with a few sheets of lasagne floating in it and some noodles thrown in. And that swimming pool was getting bigger.

  The trip to Sirius was far less involved. The binary star system was a near neighbor. The initial part of the journey would be slow but after three months, full velocity would be attainable. Powered by a vortex of axion matter, harnessed from space itself, there was no need to carry a great deal of fuel for the trip.

  The Napeans as predicted did not protest the departure of 9000 of its citizens. The remaining population was resigned to dealing with the next CME then continuing as normal until such time as the second fleet was ready for departure. The Real people on the other hand were less accepting of the situation. As the last 50 were being escorted up into the transdome, a group of mainly men appeared at the top of the second street—they were armed with all manner of weapons, and stood menacingly, as if they intended to intercept the last groups of pioneers.

  As it turned out, the “gang” were merely standing by to make sure the Napeans were actually leaving and anoth
er group of “armed Greenhill residents” appeared at the top of transdome 1 to make sure that no surprises were being left behind.

  The whole fleet was evacuated in less than twenty-four hours.

  Chapter 52

  The Eridani Void

  IN NAPEA, THE ten percent of the population who were about to board the vessels of the first fleet felt trepidation, excitement, and—in some cases—real anxiety.

  The rest said surprisingly little about the matter. Greater disruption was caused by temporarily closing sections of the network. Once again, electrotelepathy tended to moderate radical views. Despite a hundred years of segregation, although there had been plenty of talk about it, not one free-thinking Napean radical had emerged with the wherewithal to reconcile the Subs situation. Anyone with an original thought was self-medicated back into the flock.

  The hype surrounding the voyage was also diminished by recollections of previous forays into the solar system. While interplanetary successes had been steady, the failures had not been forgotten. A large Napean contingent had lived and worked on the moon processing Luna ore and operating a galactic observatory. However, a series of widely publicized accidents made it a “Subs only” working environment.

  Mars had also endured its share of catastrophes. Napean settler programs were suspended when hundreds of lives were lost due to the atmospheric corrosion and oxidization of health and safety equipment. Service international was forced to use Sub labor with robotronic guidance to continue the extraction of highly valuable amenium, titanium, and daritode crystals—resources fundamental to engineering the modern spaceship.

  A voyage to Saturn departed Las Vegas space station in 2180 and was only days away from its destination when it vanished. A rescue mission lead by a captain later known as “Steve 23” had five crew members. Not quite making it to Saturn, his ship famously crash-landed on the moon Europa. “Steve” was the only survivor. His ingenuity had seen him devise a way to repair his ship. But modern Napeans were not interested in this kind of thrill-seeking.

  The Eridani constellation, however, was thought to be a safe bet; it was close, and situated right next to the biggest empty space in the known universe: the Eridani void. This was good, because at that time, light speed navigational control was still in a “developmental phase.” Crashing into things wouldn’t be a problem out there. However, with the razzle-dazzle of high-speed travel and “wow” factor of time warping, the captain managed to misplace the constellation. The void turned out to be very big indeed, and they found themselves horribly lost. Prior to the days of the mortet funnel and axion harvesting, fuel was carried on board. Fearing they would run out, the captain decided to turn back in the direction of where he thought home might be. To save on fuel they reduced flying speed, increasing the duration of the trip by five years—for which they had insufficient supplies. Using an IV micro pulse solution, which simultaneously cooled, enlarged, and flushed arterioles and capillaries, they self-induced a state of torpor.

  Years later, by some miracle they were spotted by a Martian mining frigate, drifting slowly, totally off course and dangerously close to Jupiter. They were boarded, woken up, and later, very embarrassed.

  Lofty Mountain Napeans had become quite oblivious to their extraterrestrial links. They knew there was a world of activity going on hundreds of miles above them, but mining on other planets and interstellar travel had traditionally been taken on by Napeans and Service officials from other places: Tokyo, Santiago, Beijing, and Las Vegas. This was where the important things happened. That was about to change.

  Napeans were allowed two bags each—two bags to carry a life from one planet to another. For them, life on board the ship was largely the same as it had been on Earth. ETP, drugs and games and a relatively new form of entertainment: the storytelling plug in, which operated on a trial and error basis. This program was able to closely observe brain activity during the telling of an ETP story. Whether it was a genetically predisposed reaction to certain story types, or that certain story types “spoke” to players as a result of their ancient experiences, was not known. The program assessed the Napeans’ cumulative intellectual absorption and drew from thousands of age-old narratives. The program could utilize tried-and-true stylistic and technical combinations: folk tale, stream of consciousness, analect, character-based, metaphorical, allegorical, crime, journal, descriptive; each time the story was different, but each time it became more appealing. It was delivered via ETP; you heard the words, nothing else. What it did to the brain in the long term was not known—but it was proving to be one of the most successful pieces of software ever designed.

  This is what many of the Napeans were doing as they settled into the star Sapphire. The ironic thing was that as many of them were enjoying this peak experience, there was another one going on around them. The wonder of space. But as Napeans filtered up and on board the spaceships they observed very little of their surroundings, Earthly pursuits accompanying them, occupying their minds like the very clothes on their backs.

  And although they were due to move into a new epoch, a new world with the Subterraneans, attitudes toward them hadn’t changed. Hatred still pervaded the Napean philosophy.

  Historically, humans were able to see themselves as part of an ecosystem, as one of many creatures sharing a world. People had been surrounded by animals and able to observe them—cats being cats and dogs being dogs. Human beings had always been self-absorbed, but in ancient times they had the benefit of being able to see a different point of view: what does the cat see? How does the child feel? Is the dog happy? Napeans, however, spent a considerable period of time observing and referring to only themselves. And while this produced a certain intensity for growth, it was not enough; the human brain required refraction, satire, and absurdity.

  Traditionally many perspectives had been better than none, but the modern Napean lost sight of this; the differences embodied in the Subs were seen as willful perversions, and continued to be a source of alienation.

  Chapter 53

  On Board the Star Sapphire

  MOST OF THE room on the ships was taken up with living and entertainment areas, software machinery and engineering hardware. Each ship had a bio-science section full of equipment and a load of DNA micro stock containing over two million different species of Earth life-forms. Biodiversity had not been a tenet of Napea, but the Service could not be sure what they might need in the new world. Like Noah on the ark, they carried a huge genome supply as a lunch box or a first aid kit—jam-packed with DNA.

  The Star Sapphire was different—it also had growing plots, a protein room, and water and air recycling units, as well as one thousand Napeans and five hundred real people. Culturing areas also produced slabs of fish, beef, and chicken—surf and turf in a test tube.

  The Subs and the Napeans lived in separate areas of the ship. Both groups firmly believing that cohabitation would be impossible.

  The Subs were kept in cells of six, eight, or ten. The majority of the Napean rooms were doubles located at the front two thirds of the ship.

  The sixth and most outer level, both bow and stern, featured viewing and leisure areas. The Service had restricted command areas on this level at both bow and stern. Levels five, four, three, and two were all mainly living areas, with level one being used almost entirely for growing.

  People were able to walk around quite normally because the Mortet funnel, the engine, created its own gravitational pull towards the central core.

  The ships interior was characterized by hard, dark Lunatex softened by curvaceous angles and fixtures. Designers had countered the gothic building material with exemplary lighting. Napeans had taken lighting to a whole new level. The ship was no exception. Lighting could energize a work area, foster somnolence in another, boost plant growth in a garden, create a little piece of Tropicana or while maintaining epidermal health and vitamin levels.

  The Children had grown very social and independent and were responsible for a number of small
er gardens. Today they were harvesting of a spinach plot. Parents never knew where they were. In this regard the Napeans had created a rod for their own back; a good deal of time was spent by guards attempting to manage the behavior of children.

  Sylvana had taken Ryan out to meet some children from Greenhill. Alia and Madi stayed behind to rest.

  “I can’t stop feeling guilty for what we left behind.” Said Alia. “You have guilt…I have hate issues,” said Madi.

  “Don’t worry so do I,” said Alia.

  “It’s the way they leer at you... If they’re so much better than us why do they find us attractive?”

  “It’s simple—they don’t like you, they just want to have sex with you.”

  “So romantic,” said Madi

  “Mmmm,” agreed Alia. “Its ‘the Service’ officials I want to meet—I would literally…”

  “Rip their heads off and shit down their necks?” said Madi jokingly.

  “…not specifically their necks no…” said Alia smiling, then added: “just be careful… about what you say, there are …”

  “Yeah, yeah…”

  Alia spoke softly: “Slowly, slowly. We’re going to reclaim what is owed us—reclaim for those who couldn’t be here…” said Alia.

  “…if you want to do that you won’t be here either; they’ll simply have you sucked out into the vacuum of space. Forget about it,” said Madi.

  “We’re on this ship for a while. Jeffery and the others are on this ship for a while… eventually it’ll happen. I do not want the next generation of children to live like slaves.”