by M. D. Cooper
Eleven said, sounding bemused.
Jessica looked at Trevor, who was already staring at her. “Well?”
“I would really like to know what is going on here,” Trevor said. “If he wanted to kill us, he could have done it at any point, I imagine…”
“You want to stake your life on that?” Jessica asked.
Trevor shrugged and reached for Jessica’s hand. “I put my life in your hands a lot—and you could have killed me a few times too.”
Trevor shrugged. “It’s gotten me this far.”
Jessica took a deep breath and gripped Trevor’s hand as she walked forward—and off the platform.
There was a brief flutter as a grav field caught them and gently lowered them down the shaft.
Jessica complied, and slowly, everything went dark around her.
THE JOURNEY
STELLAR DATE: 11.17.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Manhattan, Star City
REGION: Star City System, Perseus Arm
As he spoke, stars appeared around Jessica, configurations and constellations she did not recognize. As she turned, gazing into space, Jessica noticed that Trevor was nowhere to be seen.
Iris confirmed.
Jessica wondered about Trevor, if he would be alarmed. Although there didn’t seem to be anything to worry about, the experience felt very much like a full-immersion sim.
As she turned about, gazing into space, she saw a wide, diffuse nebula. Its general outline was reminiscent of the Stillwater Nebula, though the details didn’t match.
She turned a hundred and eighty degrees and saw the galactic core.
Iris responded.
A moment later a ship appeared before them, winking into existence as it had dropped out of the dark layer and into normal space.
Jessica saw that it was an FGT Worldship. Given their location, she surmised that it was the Perseus.
The dance of the stars accelerated, and the ship sped through them, periodically disappearing into the dark layer for short hops before dropping back into normal space.
It’s journey through the nebula and the dense star formations around it took decades, but it moved forward inexorably.
At one point the ship dumped out of the dark layer in the middle of space, near no other stars, the vessel venting atmosphere in three places.
The ship progressed through regular space from that point on, passing out of the nebula, and into the Perseus Arm.
Dozens of probes flew out from the ship and disappeared into the dark layer as the Perseus moved forward. Presently, the ship disappeared into the dark layer once more, and Jessica’s view raced forward to what she already knew to be the Perseus’s final destination: the Serenity System.
The system’s great gas giant possessed two terrestrial-sized moons, and the system had several other planets and small worlds that the terraformers began to move toward the planet she knew as Serenity Primus.
It took centuries, but eventually the five moons of Serenity orbited the gas giant planet in their klemperer rosette, just as they still had when Jessica first had first seen the world and its moons several weeks ago.
Time accelerated, and the moons spun around Serenity, with little change until a construction project began beyond the orbit of the moons. Its purpose took some time to become clear, but eventually, Jessica recognized it as a starship. It was over twenty kilometers long, far larger than the Perseus worldship which had travelled so far to reach Serenity.
Once the ship’s construction was complete, it orbited the world for several more of Serenity’s years before leaving, jumping out of the system, and jumping back toward the Stillwater Nebula.
Jessica’s view raced across space and stopped in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, just a dark patch of space.
Then a large shape passed by, and Jessica realized it was a planet. The ship from Serenity had arrived in the system and paused, disgorging several smaller vessels before it carried on, until it came to a small object, glowing faintly in the darkness.
The ship began to orbit the object, and Jessica realized that it must have been one of the neutron stars in the Star City System.
Time sped up once more, and she watched as great objects were built in orbit of the neutron star, their purpose unknown to Jessica, until suddenly a distant object flared into life—the other neutron star.
The objects were focusing the gravity of one star, and using it to draw matter off the other star. Moments later, the star around which the objects were orbiting, flared into a brilliant display as matter from its distant sibling reached it and began to accrete.
Jessica turned away, the display too brilliant to look at. Even witnessing these events, it was hard to believe that such an act would be undertaken. Though she had suspected the builders of Star City must have used binary accretion to decrease the mass of the star within the dyson sphere, seeing it was something else entirely.
After a time, the flow of matter must have decreased, because the accreting neutron star no longer flared as matter fell into it—though it still glowed brightly, its surface now heated into the millions of degrees.
The gravity lensing devices were left in place, and her view closed with the less massive star, now only one tenth its original mass—or so Jessica surmised.
Jessica wondered about that. What did the AIs see in humanity’s future that would cause Iris to make a statement such as ‘it was only a matter of time’?
As she mulled that thought over, the builders began to construct rings around the now less-massive neutron star, which would become Star City.
As the rings were being built, the star periodically flared, and twice rings under construction buckled, one falling into the star, which flared brightly as the ring’s matter was broken down.
Jessica wondered who was doing this work. Most of it had to be done remotely. The hot neutron star was not yet a suitable place for people to be near.
Once the base
ribbing was in place, new structures were added, creating massive hexagons and pentagons, layered atop one another in a fashion that reminded her of a massive buckyball.
Eventually the shape of a smooth sphere emerged. So maybe it does only have one terraformed level, Jessica mused.
As the work building the dyson sphere had progressed, all remaining matter in the system was pulled by heavy lifters into orbit around the dyson sphere.
Bit by bit, worlds, moons, and asteroids of the Star City System were torn apart. Jessica supposed that massive molecular decouplers must have been in use—similar to what the Jovians had used in Sol when they had torn Uranus’s outer layers away.
Eventually, sections of the sphere were covered in matter—what Jessica assumed would eventually become the dirt that would be built up into continents.
Though the sphere appeared smooth, Jessica knew it must not be, and as the ‘ground’ was created, she could see the edges of the hexagons and pentagons protrude. With the way the gravity would work on the flat sections of the sphere, those edges would effectively be uphill. And sure enough, she could see the earth piled on the sections mound up in the center, further rounding the sphere.
Eventually icy moonlets were brought near, and water began to pour from them onto the world. The water formed lakes, then oceans, then the vast, multi-world pools of water they had seen upon entry.
The seas did not cross over the edges of the hexagonal and pentagonal sections, and Jessica suspected this was done to keep huge gravity waves from forming as the sphere slowly rotated around the neutron star at its core.
As the seas were being filled, new rings were built, comprising the shell through which they had passed when entering the sphere.
The shell was completed in much less time, and before long, Jessica’s view of Star City was very much the same as it had been during the Sexy’s approach.
She wondered how long the project had really taken, just as Iris commented on it as well.
Jessica asked.
Their view shifted, and suddenly they were within the sphere, looking over the world-continents within. Jessica recognized more worlds. Some from Sirius, Tau Ceti, and the many planets of Alpha Centuari.
Transport ships began pouring through the openings in the dyson sphere, and they watched as people began to spread across the land.
Some built cities, others disappeared into the wilderness, living alone, or in small groups.
<‘Why’ is a complex question,> Eleven replied.
They watched as the people spread across the world-continents, growing in number until Jessica imagined their population to be in the many trillions.
It was like Sol back in the fourth millennia, when the security made possible by the Sol Space Federation engendered a new era of peace and prosperity for humanity.
Eleven brought the view down to the cities, farms, and settlements. Jessica saw that this was different. These people had already reached what they viewed to be a desirable pinnacle and, as a civilization, were taking their rest in their utopia.
They had no wars, no strife, they simply…existed.
Eleven said.
There was debate about building something larger, about making more dyson spheres, about filling the galaxy with them. These debates raged for some time, and some few people left on new adventures.>
Jessica wondered about that, about where those people would have gone. One thing was certain—there was a strong wanderlust in these people.
As they spoke, many of the people began to disappear. The smaller settlements emptied out, then larger ones, then eventually the cities were vacant, maintained and kept clean by machines that no longer had any reason to do so.
Jessica whistled in her mind. Such a thing was unheard of. Few even believed in such a thing as ascension beyond the planes of existence that humans occupied. Fewer still believed it would take the form of some sort of metaphysical event.
Eleven replied.
Eleven said.
Jessica knew that it had not—not from what Terry and Misha had shared about the city coming under attack from the Orion Guard.
Eleven replied.
Iris said.
Eleven passed an affirmative thought.
Eleven replied.
Jessica said as she pondered what Eleven’s revelation truly meant.
Eleven said.
No one spoke for a moment, and Jessica watched the interior of the empty world pass between day and night.
Their viewpoint raced out of the sphere’s shell and they were back in space.
It felt as though an eternity had passed, as though she had lived a dozen lifetimes within the protective shell of Star City’s outer layer while watching their civilization flourish and evolve.
Now, out amongst the stars once, more, she remembered the vast sprawl of human civilization. Ever expanding, stretching onward. Jessica wondered how long it would take for humanity to fill the galaxy. Now that the more advanced civilizations had jump gates, any distance was traversable in a matter of hours, not months or years.
