by B. V. Larson
After I felt I had our formations, supplies, organizational structure and basic tactical plans worked out, I headed to Marvin’s module to see how he was doing. Mostly, I wanted to know if he’d solved the problem of getting past the impenetrable ring.
One trick all commanders learn over time is to delegate responsibility. I’d had trouble doing this early on and had micro-managed everything. Being the de-facto emperor of Earth had forced me to learn how to step back and let others do their jobs. Realizing I couldn’t be everywhere at once, I’d ordered Marvin to come up with a way to breach the ring. I’d given him every resource I could and stepped back. It’d been more than a week since we’d planned the mission so I figured it was time to check in and evaluate his progress.
All smiles and innocence, I traveled down the echoing passageways to the stern of the vessel. There, in a hump-like module we’d added to the spine of the battleship, was Marvin’s laboratory.
The door melted open at the touch of my glove – one of the advantages of being the commander of the entire fleet. This door was bigger than most on the ship, a circular affair, some fifteen feet in diameter.
As it opened, it changed color from silver to a tin-yellow then disintegrated into a metallic mist. I stepped inside and had a look around.
It only took a few seconds for my smile to be replaced by a frown. Sometimes, the old adage about ignorance being bliss was all too true.
I don’t know what I’d expected to find in Marvin’s lair. Maybe a facsimile of one of the rings or a shiny chrome gizmo—something cool-looking and high-tech, I guess. Instead, I found the all too familiar-looking and rather grungy sac of shivering liquids. The sac was huge and long, looking like the intestinal tract of a prehistoric behemoth. Windows had been cut into the tank of organic soup at several key locations to allow observation of the contents.
I didn’t need to peep inside those windows to know what I’d see. He had microbes in there—probably the intelligent kind.
Glaring around the chamber, which was festooned with various other pieces of equipment, I saw little else that looked useful. I clanked to the center of the room, looking around for Marvin himself. I heard, rather than saw, the telltale rattle of uncoiling tentacles behind the organic tank. Marvin was often given away by his tentacles. He seemed to be unaware of their activity when he wasn’t using them, much as a man might tap his foot or twitch nervously. Marvin’s tentacles rasped and clicked constantly when they weren’t doing anything else—especially if he was nervous.
“I see you back there, robot,” I said sternly.
“Nice of you to drop by, Colonel Riggs.”
He rose up as I watched, climbing the hull of the ship behind the organic tank until he was poised above it on the ceiling, like a spider hovering over its struggling kill. “In the future, however, it might be more polite to announce the timing of your visits.”
“So you could clean up the contraband, huh? That’s not going to happen. A commander has access to every corner of his flagship at all times.”
“That’s not strictly true, sir. Star Force protocol stipulates that a male officer is not permitted to walk in on a female crewmember at an inappropriate—”
“All right, I’ve heard enough. What the hell are you doing in here? You aren’t supposed to grow a colony of Microbes. Explain yourself.”
There was a pause during which Marvin threw his cameras wide, trying to get a reading on my mood.
“Are you feeling well, Colonel?”
“No, I’m feeling pissed off,” I told him. “Now answer my question.”
“You specified during our briefing that I’d be given a laboratory facility and allowed to do whatever scientific work was required in order to accomplish my mission: Namely, the breaching of the impregnable ring.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Shall I play the recording, sir?”
I fumed. “No. I might have said words to that effect, but that didn’t countermand everything else I’d ever forbidden you to do.”
“I think we’ve had this argument before, Colonel.”
I frowned, thinking about it. We had, and he’d won in the end. But I wasn’t through giving him a hard time yet.
“What are you doing to these poor microscopic bastards in the tank?”
“There is no cruelty involved,” he said. “I’ve discovered a procedure that allows me to euthanize small portions of the population in such a way that they experience a brief period of extreme joy before succumbing. In this way—”
“You’re killing them again? Experimenting on them? For what purpose?”
“There are two purposes. The first is to use natural selection to create a more serious-minded population. I’ve discovered that, when I give the Microbes work to, do fewer than one in eleven actually participates in my project. I find that rate of obedience unacceptable, and I’m therefore seeking to improve it.”
I moved to the tank and looked inside. There were big, slow bubbles, drifting clusters of what looked like see-through algae and a few cloudy lights at the top and bottom. Microbe colonies resembled dirty water, for the most part, and it was difficult to get worked up about anyone abusing them. After all, didn’t humans test products on mammals that were far closer to a human in nature? Didn’t we put chlorine in our swimming pools to wipe out trillions of bugs like these?
Despite those arguments, I’d always felt an urge to protect them because they were sentient.
“Marvin, I want you to stop euthanizing them.”
“But they’re part of my project—to break the unbreakable.”
I looked at him, and he studied me in return.
“You’re bullshitting me,” I said.
“Not so.”
“How, exactly, does killing off pleasure-seeking Microbes help you break through into Macro space?”
I knew, of course, that I shouldn’t even ask the question. To do so was to fall into whatever trap Marvin had assembled for me. But I did it anyway because I was curious, and desperate. Marvin had to get us through that ring to the Macro bases beyond. If I really thought torturing Microbes would get us there, I’d probably let him kill the entire genus, God help me.
Marvin detached himself from the ceiling and slithered down closer to the tank. He wrapped some of his tentacles around it almost lovingly. I thought I saw the cloudy waters swirl slightly in response. Did they know he was out there in dangerous proximity?
“Colonel Riggs, do you have any pointless pastimes that help you think, relax and which serve to stimulate your cortex?”
I blinked at the question. “Um, I suppose. I play pool sometimes.”
“Yes. You also drink alcohol and frequently seek sexual encounters.”
“What has that got to do with—?”
“Everything,” he said. He gave the tank a gentle squeeze with a loop of his longest metallic tentacle. “Manipulating this tank relaxes my mind. By defocusing my thoughts, I’m able to put my subconscious mind to work. That often gives me critical ideas that help me solve complex problems.”
I squinted at him. “So you’re telling me you have a subconscious mind?”
“I have co-processors that operate independently of my primary processor. You have the same system, the only difference is yours are organic in nature and rather haphazardly organized.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “I think I’m getting what you’re saying. Torturing these little guys and training them to do tricks is fun for you, the way caring for a fish tank or a cat might please a human. Right?”
“Correct. Your analogies are uncharacteristically appropriate.”
“All right,” I said, “you can keep your pets for now. But try not to kill them off all the time, okay Marvin? It’s disturbing to humans.”
“Permission confirmed and documented,” Marvin said.
I knew my voice had been recorded forever. I doubt anyone possessed more damning evidence of every wrongful thing I’d approved than Marvin did.
&nb
sp; “You still haven’t told me if you’ve solved the problem yet.”
“I believe that I have,” he said.
I stared at him for a shocked moment. “You what? You’ve solved it? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I solved it before we left, actually. The answer was quite simple. I’m surprised you didn’t come up with it yourself.”
In an instant, I understood the situation. He’d given me a song and dance about torturing Microbes for relaxation and to help him think. I’d given permission, in order to complete a critical project. With permission secured, he’d revealed his work was done. No doubt he’d now request a reward for finishing ahead of schedule.
As these thoughts surged through me, I felt myself getting angry all over again. Marvin was good at that. He could work you up, calm you down, then do it all over again in the space of a single conversation.
“Just tell me what the hell the answer is,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“I’m detecting a rise in your blood-pressure, Colonel Riggs. Is that response an indication of joy and excitement?”
“Something like that.”
“As I said, the answer is very simple. We’re going to build a bomb. A very powerful bomb of a kind we’ve never built before. We’ll send it through the ring and detonate it the instant it passes through the ring. Whatever system is destroying our probes on the far side will be destroyed when the bomb detonates.”
“Hmm,” I said, fairly unimpressed. “That sounds fine, but there were only spare nanoseconds between the crossover and the destruction of the last probe. How will the device detect when it has passed through?”
“You’ve placed your finger upon the crux of the problem. That tiny, but significant, detail has kept me from completing my solution.”
I felt myself frowning harder, the corners of my mouth tugging downward with irresistible force.
“You don’t have anything, do you? This is all a ruse to get me to let you keep tormenting your pets. I’m not falling for it, Marvin. I want details. What kind of bomb are you talking about? You said something very powerful. A nuke, right? What is so exciting about a fusion bomb?”
“I didn’t specify fusion as the energy source of the explosion. In fact, fusion can’t be used. The reaction would be too slow. Several millionths of a second are required for a fusion reaction to be generated. First, the fission weapon charges must go off, which depend on slow chemical compression effects of their own. Those forces in turn generate enough compression upon the core to cause a fusion effect, which—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know enough about it to know it can’t beat a computer. How are you going to make it faster?”
“By not using a fission or fusion reaction. The reaction has to be faster than that—something that is almost instantaneous.”
“What?”
“Are you familiar with gravitational implosions, Colonel? When matter is suddenly compressed into a collapsed form, it releases a great deal of energy. The best thing about it is the lack of a necessity for rare elements. Any type of matter can be compressed and turned into something equivalent to a fusion bomb.”
I shrugged. “I’ve read up on the theory.”
“The science is far beyond the theoretical. Small amounts of collapsed matter were first created artificially at the CERN laboratories in 2015 during dark matter experiments. Since then, it has been produced many times—but always on a small scale and only for brief periods of time.”
“What makes you think you can do better? What makes you think that you can make enough for a weapon?”
Marvin’s tentacles whipped and curled with self-satisfaction. Apparently, I’d asked him a question he wanted to answer. Knowing this galled me, but only slightly.
“Now we get to the crux of the issue. How does one construct such a device, and how does one weaponize it? I have those answers. As you may recall, I recently manufactured collapsed materials—stardust, I think you called it, even though the name is inaccurate. The matter in question was not collapsed by a star.”
I made an exasperated sound. “We call it stardust because it’s like stardust. I know it didn’t come from a star—at least, not recently.”
“Very well, I will categorize it as one your many pointless generalizations. In any case, the stardust I’ve generated and the process I used to create it can be applied to separate collapsed matter from normal matter—rather like the way centrifuges separate radioactive materials from impurities, if I may be allowed to indulge in my own stretched analogy.”
“Okay, okay. You’ll use your gravity device and collapsed material to make something that can be imploded upon command. Then, you’ll send it through the ring when you have it ready, and because the reaction is faster than other known reactions, the bomb could theoretically go off before it’s destroyed by the enemy’s defensive systems.”
“I believe that’s what I said.”
I sighed. “All right, I get the essence of your plan. But let’s consider the challenge of detecting the exact instant in which your device goes through the ring. It has to know when it’s time to detonate. How can a sensor figure that out perfectly? Let me think… Can you time it?”
“I assume you’re asking if I can set up a device connected to the object, which will cause it to detonate the moment it should be on the far side of the ring?”
“Right, would that work?” I asked.
“No. I’ve tested the theory on the way out here as this ship passed through the rings. Each time we pass through a given ring, there is a slight, unpredictable variation in the process. The moment we’re transported from one ring to the next is not the same each time. I haven’t managed to determine how to control the rings or to anticipate the moment they will transport a body moving through them.
One instant, a ship is in the local system, and the next it’s been transferred to the target system. Unfortunately, the moment isn’t always the same length of time. There can be as much as a quarter-second variance.”
“That much, eh?” I said, beginning to pace.
I could see Marvin’s problem. I was also less angry now as I understood he had been working on this problem, rather than ignoring it or playing around with his fish tank.
I stopped at the biggest window that showed the interior of the tank. I stared inside seeing the warm, yellowy lights at the bottom. Did they keep the Microbes warm, or was I looking at a source of torment for them, perhaps something Marvin had glossed over?
It didn’t matter to me right then because I thought I had the answer.
I spun around to face Marvin again, pointing a finger up at him. He shrank away slightly, as if he thought I might be accusing him of something.
“I’ve got it,” I said. “Or, at least I think I do. You can’t use sensors—active or passive. By the time the data comes in, it will be too late. There wouldn’t even be time to process it. And you can’t get away with timing the point of departure, either. It’s too random. But there is another way.”
Marvin loomed closer, excited. “I’m interested in what you have to tell me, Colonel.”
I looked at the tank. “I will, if you agree not to kill any more of them, Marvin. Do we have a deal?”
“Absolutely. I can almost certainly guarantee their safety in the light of a breakthrough. Part of my pattern of behavior is due to frustration. You are about to relieve me of that state—I hope.”
I opened my mouth and almost gave him a lecture. I almost told him it wasn’t right to take one’s frustration out on living creatures. But I closed it again. Didn’t I enjoy banging my fist down onto smart metal surfaces when I lost my temper? I’m sure the nanites didn’t enjoy cleaning up my messes. Individual nanites probably didn’t always survive the experience, either. To Marvin, microscopic entities were all the same, whether mechanical or biological in nature.
“How about this,” I said. “Let’s try a dead-man’s switch. We’ll transmit a steady signal to the probe as it passes through the ring. Th
e moment it goes to the other side, the signal will naturally be cut off. All your device has to do is detect that it isn’t getting that tone—and it detonates. The defensive systems, whatever they are, will be destroyed.”
Marvin thought about it.
“A dead-man’s switch,” he mused. “I’m unfamiliar with that colloquial expression. I’m accessing search data…ah, I understand. The relaxation of the corpse sets off the device because it ceases to apply continuous pressure to a contact. That is a good analogy, Colonel.”
“Well? Do you think it will work?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think I could build a device that would detect the broken signal and trigger the device quickly enough for our purposes.”
For the very first time since I’d entered his lair and begun looking around, I smiled.
-22-
The fleet crossed into the Eden System. I was glad to see that Captain Grass was back at his post, scaring the Blues with his outdated carrier.
Grass greeted me as I entered the system, and I turned down the audio until it was barely audible. Every now and then, he paused, and I made an appreciative comment. He seemed to like this and blew nice words about honor and the grand battles his people had fought alongside mine. He’d been talking about this for nearly a half-hour. I treated myself to a beer while he did so.
I was in a magnanimous mood. Marvin finally had a complete, feasible plan. Sure, it might not work, but at least we had something to work with. We’d try it, then send through a normal probe. If it didn’t come back, we’d failed. But if it did…I’d take my fleet through, and there would be hell to pay inside the Macro home system.
