by Tom Germann
The blonde had her hand up again. Her name was Kelly, but it was easier just calling her the Mouth. I tried to ignore how good the uniform that was so baggy on all of us looked on her. She continued in her loud, clear voice. “Sir, wouldn’t that make us sociopaths?”
Someone giggled in the back rows. It sounded like a girl. The professor looked in that direction with an irritated look on his face. Then he focussed on the blonde again. “No, not at all. We are making you slightly psychotic. The difference here is that you will have a strongly ingrained sense of right and wrong as well as a survival instinct. Because you are all aware of what is going on, you will work to counter any extremes that would normally occur. Is that clear enough?” His eyebrows had gone up at the end.
But Mouth wasn’t done yet. “But sir, what happens if that training doesn’t work and someone goes fully nuts?”
He stopped smiling. “Candidate. The Corporation looks after its own.” He turned and went back to the podium, where he checked his notes before starting the class.
The information on the expectations of the Corporation was much more interesting than the two-hour lecture on star drive technology, which none of us understood in any way. The one thing I did get from those lectures? Most of the scientists and engineers that work on the actual star drive systems do not really understand them. Some of the scientists who come closer to understanding the system and how it works go insane.
Of course, the mad professor is a highly functioning psychotic who has gone completely around the bend, but his training has held. We found that out later, and it did not build our confidence.
As far as I am able to wrap my head around it, the star drive is a bit more than the average person on the street understands. Our universe has certain laws. Laws that cannot be broken. In some cases, they can be bent a little, but usually that takes a lot of energy or there are other penalties. The star drive completely ignores that and changes everything. Ships in star drive do not interact with “our” universe. They step outside, and then cheat.
I remember looking at the numbers and then suddenly it started to make a little sense. I had a headache for two days after that. There was one section member that did grasp some of the numbers. He was taken away and we never saw him again.
The system is so poorly understood that ships do not go into or come out of star drive in a system. They always make the transition well outside the limits. No one can tell us why, but a common rumour in training is that if something goes wrong, it would be a big wrong that could take out a planet. Missing ships over the years, was that done by pirates or by a miscalculation?
The other part is that the Corporation is involved in a great deal of research on newer, faster, longer-range star drives. Those research stations are always small and in dead systems. It also appears, from looking at manifests and personnel lists, that the security elements are much larger than normal. If that is in case a scientist goes nuts or if some other spacefaring race or pirates ever come along and want to take that research data, I don’t know.
Our class carries on and I have more to think on.
We take classes like that on cutting-edge technology, and we take even more classes on history. Ancient history is my favourite and the easiest for me. The three hundred and Xenophon and all the rest are inspiring stories that told me a lot.
Our instructors think differently, with a cold, pragmatic view to winning. Interestingly enough, it’s one of our physical instructors who covers these classes. He was standing at the front of the class one day and was wrapping up. “So the three hundred made a mistake. There was awareness that the enemy was coming and there were more than they had ever faced. They tried and they went off admirably, holding the enemy until the other city-states were roused and a proper army could be dispatched. Complete BS. In the Corporation’s view, this is a fail and a loss. In my eyes, this was a catastrophic failure. Yes, they won. But they could have so easily lost the battle and the war if circumstances were different.”
I held my hand up and he nodded at me. “Sir, we know they made the right decisions. They won in the end, even with their losses. The enemy was held up and then the good guys had a victory. Isn’t it easy to say they could have lost?”
He nodded at me again. “Good that someone is thinking, but you’re not seeing all the options or what else could have happened. At that time, every decision could have gone any one of multiple different ways, including failing. What they should have done is guaranteed their victory by cheating.”
I just stared at him as I tried to figure out what he meant. “I don’t understand, sir. How could they have cheated?”
He leaned forward over the podium in this quiet classroom for fifty. “They should have cheated by having those who stood against them poisoned. Or perhaps their strongest, loudest and dumbest supporters back in the city-states could have been killed with methods used by the enemy. Perhaps they could have had paid actors act as ‘survivors’ from distant lands that would cry out loud in city streets, meeting houses and public events about how horrible and evil the enemy was. There are lots of dirty tricks that they could have used, and may well have used some of them. The records from back that far are not good, obviously.”
He nodded at me while I tried to figure out what should have happened and why. “Just remember — if you ain’t cheating? You ain’t trying.”
He carried on through his lecture and at the end, he wrapped up with this statement: “Remember, you study history to see what happened, what could have been done better and what the enemy could have done to counter the actions that they faced. Now look at reality. The winners wrote the history of what happened. If you go back and review the other side’s take on what happened, you will find reasons why things worked out the way that they did or did not. That other information is not always available. Anything can disrupt a battle plan and throw everything out of order. The other thing to remember is that no matter what people actually write down in reports and memoirs years later, they did not have the complete view of the action. What is called the ‘fog of war’ is real and exists, which is why so many good plans have failed and some stupid ones worked.” He paused here for a second while his eyes swept over us. “If you take nothing else from this lecture, remember, anything can happen in war. You need to focus on winning. Class is over. Move!”
Certain classes are long and some are shorter in time and duration.
For me? I really hate math. I never liked it. It’s all just numbers jumbling together. I can do all the basics and even some of the more advanced stuff, sure.
We were in classes looking at star drive math. Now while that was recognized as completely incomprehensible, we also had “real” or “normal” math.
An example is calculations that involve figuring out how much fuel is required by a first-generation cargo hauler to leave our system and move to where the star drive can be activated. Then for so many stops along the way, and then all the way back. At the end of all of that, after estimating required fuel, you have to factor in coming out in real space off-target, so you require extra fuel.
We spent two days in class sweating it out, trying to figure out how much fuel we’d need. Then, when it was all estimated, a computer sim was run for each set of numbers.
We all ended up dying in deep space as we ran out of fuel. Then the instructors explained the fudge factor and how that number came about. They just guessed! People are going into deep space and the final amount of fuel, after calculations by high-level AIs, is finalized by guessing!
I swear everyone’s jaw hit the desk when we were told that.
At least the rationale made sense when they explained it all. It’s not an advertised bit of information for the general public. When coming out of star drive, sometimes you come out at a different location. You could be coming out within a few kilometres of the estimated exit point, but being off by two hundred thousand is understood
as likely. There is one reported incident where a ship came out of star drive on the edge of the wrong system!
That piece of information was never made public.
Star drive requires knowing where you are before departing so that an exact path can be plotted, sort of. You enter star drive and move in a calculated direction for so long and you should re-enter normal space roughly in the correct post, that is a given. But it is also possible that you could pop out in the wrong section of space. Then if you have no known start point….. your odds of getting home are not good.
The one time this happened, the system that they popped out at was known and after a few days, they were able to move back into star drive for home.
After we spent two days on that math and found out what can really happen, we spent the next few periods of instruction on the layout of a star-drive ship. At every stop a ship makes, it always fuels up to maximum capacity. That made no sense to me when I first read it until we had gone over the math. The things that every kid knows about those ships seem to make sense with the explanations we were given at the time. But now it really makes sense. It makes a lot more sense why every ship has three times the required hydroponics sections than they regularly require. Or why they carry such large stores of food for the crew, including, in some cases, live animals. The large shipboard accommodations that can actually support 25 percent more personnel? If a ship heads home and it takes a few decades, the population can grow.
Everything else, including the amount of spare parts, machine shops and everything else, it all makes sense now. I never knew that larger ships could harvest meteors, comets and even mine on moons or small planets for resources for the fabrication of items on board the ship.
I had never wanted to go to deep space. Maybe to visit a colony in-system one day, sure. But I had never thought about leaving our system.
Now I’m going to be sent on a smaller ship all over deep space to fight off alien hordes.
To be a highly qualified member of the Corporation and stuck working for them for ten or twenty years would be great. At least if something happens in deep space and you’re off-course, you’re still paid. Unless you are somehow at fault for it. Then you’re liable.
Time passes quickly. It’s now weeks since those math classes, and I still felt dread just thinking about star-drive ships stuck in the middle of nowhere, slowly going insane over decades of heading for any star system at a snail’s pace, hoping to recognize something, while traveling by normal drive and mining on the way.
All the classes have been the same way: a day or two of learning impossible topics and then testing. Oral or written. We recently had one class where we had to assemble a three-dimensional model of the system we had been taught the previous day.
All of the classes that we took in those first weeks were theory or knowledge classes. A good bit of that time was a blur: early mornings, a brutal exercise routine, food, quick inspection and then classes from early morning till early afternoon. Then, studying, followed by a break for dinner where most of us just read while eating. I was so jealous of those who were that much smarter because they didn’t have to study as hard.
There are four guys here for every female. Every woman gets attention, but I don’t think anything has happened because there just isn’t time. Or at least, not for the first few days. Of course, after a few weeks I had a pretty good idea that grades aren’t going to stop some people.
At the end of the first week there was a rumour going around that two people had been pulled out as fails. I didn’t believe it; I thought it was most likely that someone had been talking about people failing and then someone else heard that, and suddenly there would be full-blown rumours going around about individuals disappearing as they failed.
Most of us don’t socialize. Attachments are bad. Anything bad, we don’t do, so there was no way to confirm the rumour as everyone was too busy studying. At the beginning of the second week, though, I had the proof that this was not a rumour. I saw the blond guy that had initially greeted us regularly. He was with his section. Then one morning, he wasn’t with them.
I didn’t think anything of it as he could have been in his room studying or even possibly sick. My curiosity pushed me to ask one of his section members that night at dinner. I was going to my table with a tray of food when I stopped by their table and asked where the blond guy was. There was a mousy brown-haired girl there that glared at me like I had done something wrong and then she blurted out, “Adrian didn’t make it. He was just gone this morning. We never even had a chance to say goodbye!”
The rest of the table was quiet and I didn’t have anything to say so I went to my table and sat down. Everyone ignored me because they were studying and I didn’t make any effort to say hello.
They had served breaded, deep-fried fish that night, with rice and vegetables. I really liked this meal. But after finding out what happened to the blond guy, I had no appetite and it tasted like cardboard.
I just pretended to study till we all left as a section. Back in my room, I tried to study again and then finally gave it up as a lot cause and went to bed early. I was asleep in seconds. The next day was harder, but I made it through and continued on.
We’ve just finished off a full week of classes and are called back into the auditorium in the evening after dinner.
The mad professor and the full crew walk on after we sit down. I have a chance to look around and I realize that there are fewer of us than the first time we were here. I can’t tell how many have disappeared, but there are definitely not as many of us.
Our first course of studying is over and it was brutal. Seven days a week with constant studying. I know I have been able to get six hours of sleep a night, but I’m guessing from the nodding heads around the auditorium that not everyone has been sleeping that much.
When you add in the physical training every morning before breakfast and then the classes and studying and pressure to do well on tests, we’re under a lot of strain. I’m not sure we can even take another week of this.
I don’t know how I am still here, unless they missed me when they tried to collect me. I’ve been studying as much as possible and asking questions in class but a lot of the high-end theory has proven to be too much for me. My grades off the quizzes and tests have been terrible. I’m not sure what a pass is in this course, but I doubt that 50 percent would cut it. I haven’t been getting grades much higher than that and I feel confident that they are looking for scores well over the nineties.
So I can’t figure out why I’m still here, but maybe this is going to be the big meeting where they announced who is carrying on to the next phase of training and some of us are shamed in public because we’ve done so poorly.
I’m ready for it. As the professor and his group comes onto the stage I find myself staring at the three figures that come in at the end. I haven’t seen any sign of them on the course and I have no clue why, unless we’re too new for whatever training they run.
The professor smiles and gestures. The lights immediately dim down, leaving the stage as the focus for us all. The quiet murmuring of people talking stops immediately and everyone focuses on him.
He begins. “Good evening, everyone! You are done your first phase of training, which was a primary focus on the hard sciences. Or should I say impossible?” He giggles at his own joke, which I find creepy.
“But now you need to move on to the next phase. So for the next stage, you are going to be covering a great deal more history and planning. There will also be a bit more physical fitness training as the nannites in your system are just hitting the optimum saturation point. You are likely...” He pauses at the noise coming from us and the whispers from one of the gym teachers.
He looks around with a baffled air and then tries to carry on but we are getting louder. We have nannites in our systems? I have little robots inside me rebuilding me, maybe wiping out memori
es, maybe rebuilding how I think!? How much of me is gone? Am I even thinking like I used to? Why have they done this? Are they going to make us cyborgs or use us as experiments?
The woman’s voice snaps out. “Quiet. Sit down. You will wait.” I just sit there watching her. She had never spoken to us before, not till now. The leader of the three figures has a warm voice that I can hear the warning growl in. She has walked forward and is standing at the front of the stage in the centre. She looks like she is ready to leap off into the audience on whoever continues making noise. She radiates aggression. We all quiet down and sit there staring at her.
She turns to the professor. “Professor, explain what was done and why, and what the next step is in the procedure.” She moves back to her spot with the two others and stands there waiting.
The professor is still blinking and then nods. “Of course, of course. When you first arrived here, you were scanned, and in the first day medical nannites were worked up for each one of you. Every meal and every drink, the system scans you and releases those nannites to you so that you can ingest them. They have moved into your system and started removing defects. Those of you with a predisposition to cancer or other illnesses have had those treated now. The fitness regime you went through was to stress your system so that the nannites could identify the problems within your body; now, as you hit saturation with nannites, the new ones know what to go and fix.”
