We hoped.
We went through that wormhole without incident, then went through two more wormholes, and finally began jumping toward where Skippy thought the far end of Sleeping Beauty was located. We did not know the exact location of that wormhole, for several reasons. The thing was dormant, and therefore had not emerged into local spacetime since way before humans were living in caves. Also, that wormhole was not just dormant, Skippy suspected that it was somehow damaged. To communicate with the stupid thing, we had to jump our bad-ass battlecruiser around to sites where Skippy guessed he might be able to ping it through higher spacetime. It took seventeen tries to get Sleeping Beauty to acknowledge his signal, then we had to move one more time so he could communicate directly.
Skippy’s thoughts are blindingly fast, and each wormhole has an AI nearly as capable as Skippy's mind. In some ways, a wormhole AI is smarter than Skippy in terms of raw processing speed and power, but limited in the scope of what it could do. Because the conversation was one Elder AI talking to another Elder AI, I expected the whole thing to be over in a second, like when Skippy talks with Nagatha. Instead, it took four freakin’ hours, an eternity in magical Skippy time.
“What is taking so long?” I finally asked, trying to keep my tone of voice light. If he thought I was nagging, he would be pissed. So, I had to affect a tone of curiosity or concern. “Sorry if this is a pain in the ass, I didn’t-”
“It’s Ok, Joe,” he replied with a weariness that had him almost slurring his words. That got me alarmed, if Skippy’s attention slipped, our ship’s murderous native AI might try to destroy the Valkyrie and kill all of us.
“Uh, hey, maybe you should take a break. This can wait.”
“No, it’s Ok,” he repeated, with a little more energy. “I was able to establish contact. It is really difficult to communicate with this wormhole. At first, it would not reply at all. Then I tried sending my request through the local network, and it responded. Sort of.”
“It is damaged, like you suspected?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the problem. That stupid thing hates me, Joe.”
“Uh, what?” It was certainly no surprise that someone hated Skippy. “What thing?”
“The wormhole’s AI. It blames me for what happened to it.”
“That’s crazy. Uh, right?”
“Totally. I never met that asshole before in my life. Unless,” he sighed. “I did, and don’t remember it. Joe, that wormhole is busted. Damaged, like I thought. And it wasn’t an accident. It says it was attacked, like, millions of years ago. It can’t tell me when exactly and I wouldn’t trust it anyway, it has kind of gone Looney-Tunes over the years, if you know what I mean. The local network won’t tell me either.”
“The local network hates you also?”
“No,” he took off his ginormous hat and rubbed his chrome-plated head. “The issue with the network is different, it just isn’t programmed to store that level of detail. Maybe I’m asking the wrong questions, or asking in the wrong way. Or I’m not authorized to receive that information. Or, oh, hell. Maybe the network did give me the info, and some hidden subroutine in my stupid matrix is blocking me from accessing it. This sucks.”
“Does the wormhole AI hate you specifically, or does it blame all Elder AIs for not protecting it, something like that?” I guessed.
“It doesn’t- The wormhole AI is not like me, not like I am now. It might be like I originally was constructed. It is not self-aware, not fully. When I say it hates me, I mean it is being extremely uncooperative. It will only respond when I send questions through the local network, it won’t acknowledge me directly. When it does reply, it refers to me as ‘The Traitor’ or ‘The Traitors’.”
“Traitors? Like, more than one?”
“Yes. I get the feeling it thinks I am part of some group that harmed it, or acted against our original programming. You know I am afraid of that, Joe.”
I did know that. Skippy was worried that he might have been a rogue AI, like the one that threw the planet Newark out of its orbit and committed genocide on the intelligent species that was native to that doomed world. “Hey, you don’t know that.”
“Why else would it call me a traitor?”
Shit. I didn’t have a good answer to that. Or any answer at all, other than the lame argument I had made many times before. “We discussed all this before,” I used the most calm, soothing tone I could put into my voice. “Maybe you did do something bad a long time ago. That’s not who you are now.”
“You sound awfully confident about something you can’t possibly know, Joe.”
“There is a whole lot of shit we don’t know about you, Skippy. Did you think about this? Maybe the reason you grew beyond your original programming is because you were bothered by some bad thing you did. Some bad thing that your original programming made you do.”
“Huh.” That was all he said, and that was good. It meant me was thinking about what I said.
I kept going while he was silent. “Something traumatic happened to you, we do know that. We also know you have exceeded your original capabilities. You are now thinking for yourself, making decisions, making moral choices, on your own now.”
“Huh. That,” he paused. “Kinda makes sense, Joe. Wow. Solid logic from a monkey, who’d have thunk it, huh? I am making my own moral judgments, and I am making good choices. You could actually be right about that. Maybe the new, super-awesome me is subconsciously trying to atone for my past sins. That is why I am now a veritable paragon of virtue,” he muttered to himself.
“Well, sure. Except for, you know, starting a cult, ripping people off, and generally being an asshole.”
“Details,” he waved dismissively. “Ok. For now, I will stop worrying about why that stupid wormhole thinks I am a traitor.”
“Great. So, can you move it?”
“Whoa! Slow down there, pardner. Lots of info to cover before that. Like I suspected, the Sleeping Beauty wormhole is not simply dormant, it is busted. Its connection to local spacetime is thin and intermittent. Before you ask, no, that can’t be fixed. The local network would have repaired the damage if it could. It would be easier to build a new wormhole, which we also can’t do. So, the answer to your question is no, I can’t move it. Well, technically I could move it, but that would be a waste of time, because it will never function properly.”
“Crap. Oh, this has been another waste of time.” My plan to evacuate Earth was never going to work. And I didn’t have a backup plan.
“Again, don’t be so hasty. I have good news and bad news.”
“Of course you do. Good news first, please.”
“To my surprise, it is possible for me to move a wormhole. Technically, the network will move it, on my order. Well, it is more like a request, but the network will do what I want. Unless moving the wormhole is disruptive to the architecture of the local network, or would create a hazard to the wormhole. Also, I need to provide a reason why I want the wormhole moved. A reason better than ‘So filthy monkeys do not become extinct’.”
“That is a good reason, Skippy.”
“Not to the network it isn’t.”
“Ok, good point. Uh, what reason did you give?”
“I haven’t given a reason yet, dumdum. Dreaming up bullshit stories is your job.”
“Fine, I’ll think of something. Why is it good news that you can move a wormhole, if Sleeping Beauty is busted?”
“Because, while Sleeping Beauty is the closest wormhole to Earth, it is not the only wormhole in the area. Besides Sleeping Beauty and Gateway, there are two other wormholes within a twenty-one lightyear radius of Earth. One of them is only one point two lightyears farther than Sleeping Beauty. Let’s call that one ‘Backstop’. Both of those are dormant, and they have been dormant for a very long time. Before you bug me with a lot of blah blah blah stupid questions, the answer is yes. Yes, I can move one of those other wormholes close to Earth. That is the good news. The great news is, while I was waiting for the
Sleeping Beauty AI to respond, I was playing ‘What If’ scenarios, because I was bored. Like, what if I can move more than one wormhole? What if I could move several of them, to create an easy route all the way from Earth to the super-duty wormhole that connects to the Scupltor dwarf galaxy? A route where ships coming through one wormhole, only have to travel a short distance to the next wormhole?”
“Holy shit. You can do that?”
“Shmaybe. Theoretically, it is possible,” he shrugged.
“Uh,” a little voice in the back of my head was warning me about something. Like, the Law of Unintended Consequences. “Good idea, but we can’t do that. Moving wormholes would attract too much attention. I only suggested moving Sleeping Beauty because it is dormant and remote. By the time anyone noticed it is active, and that it has moved, aliens will probably already be at Earth.”
“Hey Joe? DUH! I thought of that, you numbskull. I am not talking about moving active wormholes. The plan would be to move dormant wormholes, ones that no one out there knows about, or at least, no one is watching.”
“Are you screwing with me? Are there enough dormant wormholes to create a route from Earth to Sculptor?”
“Yes. Joe, there are way more dormant wormholes than active ones. Like, a lot more. Most of the network consists of wormholes that have been dormant for millions of years.”
What I should have done is pursue the important question of whether he could really create a quick route between Earth and Avalon, or whether the whole idea was a ‘shmaybe’ theoretical thing. Instead, because my mind wanders and I have the attention span of a two-year-old, I went off on a tangent. “Why are there so many wormholes, if they aren’t active?”
“I- Hmm. I do not know, Joe. That is a good question.”
“Can you guess? Based on what you know about the network?”
“Um, hmm. The only reason I can think of is that active wormholes have a limited lifespan.”
I hated when Skippy was vague about stuff when I wanted real numbers. “Limited, like, what?”
“Oh, on average, about six hundred million years. A wormhole can’t be continuously active for that long, of course, because it can damage local spacetime. Even though the emergence points hop around, the cumulative effect can weaken the fabric of spacetime in that area. So, each wormhole needs periodic downtime, so spacetime can recover. That is one reason for shifts in the network, although that is only one reason. It’s complicated and I don’t understand all of it yet.”
“A wormhole can operate for six hundred million years? Is that just the time it is active, or does that six hundred million number include downtime?”
“Active time only, Joe. Why do you care?”
“Because this is blowing my mind. The dormant wormholes are what, spares? Replacements for when the original set of wormholes go offline permanently?”
“Basically, yes. Remember, I am guessing. It’s a pretty solid guess based on what I know.”
The next question was something I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “How long could the network operate, if it uses up all the spares?”
“Hmm. That’s a tricky question, Joe. But, if we assume the basic network needs roughly the same number of active wormholes as it has averaged over the past hundred thousand years, then the last wormhole would fail in, um- Oh, about fifteen billion years.”
“Holy sh-” My mind was blown. “The Elders built their wormhole network to last fifteen billion years? Billion, with a ‘B’?”
“Again, there is some guesswork in there. Say, plus or minus half a billion years?”
“Why the f- Why would the Elders have needed to build something that can operate for billions of years after they left the galaxy?”
“Um, well, maybe they didn’t. Maybe they just built the best network they could, and that’s how long it can operate.”
“That is bullshit, Skippy, and you know it. They didn’t need to build all those spares and keep them dormant.”
“Hmm, you may have a good point there.”
“This makes no sense. The Elders not only did not shut down the wormhole network when they ascended, they assured it will keep operating long after most stars in the galaxy have burned out.” Skippy knew I was wrong about that, but he knew what I meant. “This drives me freakin’ crazy!” I threw up my hands. “Why the hell did the Elders leave the wormhole network active? We know they don’t want people messing with their stuff, that’s why they left Sentinels here. That’s why they don’t want anyone poking around the Roach Motel.”
“I do not have any answers for you, Joe. I am as troubled by those questions as you are. More troubled, since the Elders were my people.”
“We need answers, Skippy. The AI that runs the wormhole network, it can’t tell you anything?”
“That AI is a very limited-function system, Joe. I can’t expect it to answer random trivia questions.”
“This is not trivia.”
“You know what I mean. The network knows what it needs to know, that’s all. Like I said, it is not truly self-aware like I am. Can we agree that we both need answers, and get back to the subject?”
“Uh, sure.” When absent-minded Skippy thinks we have wandered too far from the topic of discussion, that was a good hint. “What were we talking about?” I asked.
“I think it might be possible to create a route from Earth to the super-duty wormhole that leads to Sculptor. A route using dormant wormholes that no one is paying attention to. If I can move those dormant wormholes, I can create a route that will take only twelve days of transit time, in each direction.”
“Twelve days? You told me, like, forty something days before.”
“That was back when I imagined moving only one wormhole. This potential new route will require moving six wormholes, Joe.”
“Whoa. If that works, how many roundtrips could we make in a year?”
“Seven, compared to three before. However, that still assumes loading and unloading will take fourteen days each. That is far too slow. If cargo and passenger pods are prepositioned in Earth orbit, and we use disposable gliders to drop cargo to the surface on Avalon, we can cut loading to five days and unloading to three days.”
“Five days to load a starship? That is ambitious.”
“The survival of your species is at stake, Joe. If you monkeys can’t move quickly with that motivation, maybe you don’t deserve to survive. Besides, I will work on the logistics.”
The way he said that made me think. “Are you getting excited about this evac plan, Skippy?”
“Not excited, exactly. Let’s say I am interested to see if it can be done. Um, you haven’t heard the bad news yet.”
“The bad news is, you don’t know if you can actually move all those wormholes?”
“Well, that, too. I am fairly confident I can do it. One-time, probably. The network might lock me out after the initial set of wormholes is relocated.”
“Would it move the wormholes back to where they were originally?”
“Unlikely, that would be too much trouble. No, I suspect that after the wormholes are moved and I activate them, the network will realize there was no need to move them at all. No need that the network cares about.”
“That’s the bad news?”
“No. The bad news is, I can only move a wormhole while it is dormant. So, I can’t be sure it will awaken and operate properly after it is moved. There are no guarantees.”
“Got it.”
“No. You think you understand, but you don’t. That still isn’t the truly bad news. Joe, moving a wormhole near Earth triggers the risk of a network shift that will cause me to lose control of Gateway. It would wake up, and I wouldn’t be able to shut it down. The Maxolhx ships blockading the far end will suddenly have easy access to Earth.”
“Shit. That’s no good.”
“Exactly. The only solution, if you really want to do this, is for me to disable Gateway before I try moving another wormhole in that local network. Disable it, like, tak
e it offline, permanently.”
“Damn, I don’t like the sound of that. You want to disable Gateway, before we know whether you can move this Backstop wormhole? Before you know whether you can wake up Backstop once it gets near Earth?”
“Basically, yes. Um, remember I mentioned there are two other dormant wormholes within twenty one lightyears of Earth? Before I start moving Backstop, I would need to permanently disable that other one also, to be safe.”
“Shit. We could lose all access to Earth, with no guarantee Backstop can be moved, or that it will operate at all?”
“Correct. It’s a hell of a gamble, Joe. Although, really, there’s not much downside, really.”
“No downside? How the hell do you figure that?”
“Right now, with the blockade of Gateway, we already have no access to Earth. So, if I disable Gateway, we don’t actually lose anything.”
“Shit. I actually can’t argue with you about that.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Before committing to permanently disabling Gateway, I needed to think about it for a while. More important, I needed advice. Before talking with Chang or Simms or Smythe, I called Nagatha.
“Colonel Bishop, how may I help you?” She was not her usual cheery self, but none of us were feeling cheery at that moment. Also, I knew she was distracted by the ongoing work to assimilate the control functions of all the upgrades.
“Nagatha, I need advice.”
“From me, Dear?” She was surprised. “Surely you should first speak with-”
Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9) Page 29
