The Death of the Universe: Rebirth: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 3)

by Brandon Q Morris

  “It’s like queuing. If someone is pushy, you have to be pushy, too. The operating system allocates the memory proportionately to the requests. So I’m reserving like crazy.”

  “This connection in my father’s name... could that have something to do with the rocket launch?” asked Sasha.

  “I’m wondering that, too. The satellite images converge in the mainframe there. If the program has managed to take over the system, it could be manipulating the images. But that’s not easy. We’re talking about several satellites, and the images would have to altered in such a way that everything still fits together. And in real time.”

  “I’m afraid the program is capable of all that. It also has voice recognition that works in real time. It’s as though the program came straight out of the future. Except that we know it’s from the past.”

  “Wasn’t the past once the future?”

  “In terms of a cyclic universe, you mean? There’s no proof of that, but it would explain a few things. We assumed that another civilization in this universe had written on the cosmic background radiation at some point. But that wouldn’t be easy, because it’s filling up the entirety of space. It would have been easier to do just after the Big Bang. The universe was still very small.”

  “That’s fascinating. Just imagine, a highly developed civilization packaging a program at the end of their universe in such a way that it would survive the Big Bang to be reawakened by us.”

  “But that doesn’t answer the question of why the program is behaving so aggressively.”

  “Wait, I’m trying to cut its connection to the satellite control center, but the damn program keeps shutting me out.”

  Shostakovich was breathing heavily. If only he could help him! If Shostakovich attacked it too many times, the system might even block his access. But that was an idea!

  “Try to log in as Komikov!”

  “I don’t know his password... oh!” Sasha’s knees were trembling. He pushed his ice-cold hands under them. “Ha!” cried Shostakovich. “I’ve reset Komikov’s password! Your father’s connection to the control center should drop out soon. Wait... and... now!”

  “Hopefully someone will notice that the spy satellites are suddenly delivering data! How much time do we have left?”

  “In twenty-one minutes the ostensibly-American rockets are supposed to hit. I don’t know how far along we are with our counterattack.”

  A siren blared. Then a second one added its voice to the horrible wail, then others started up in the distance. Why didn’t someone simply call President Ronald Reagan and ask why they were attacking? Or was the program interfering with communications, too?

  “The program’s trying to reestablish the connection,” said Kolya. “I’m requesting whole terabytes of data to force it back.”

  Two police Ladas with flashing lights braked with squealing tires. Sasha went to the window and looked out onto the street. Four police offers jumped out. They drew their weapons and ran to the main entrance of the building.

  Suddenly he was very calm. “I think they’re looking for me,” said Sasha.

  “The program must have called them,” suggested Kolya. “It thinks you’re behind my countermeasures and wants to eliminate you.”

  “If the police get in, we’ll lose time and the program will be able to finish enacting its plan. I have an idea.”

  Sasha went into the office. The driver was still sitting on the sofa. “You know that Komikov is my father. I have to rescue him. And for that I need your weapon. Trust me.”

  It wouldn’t work. He didn’t know the man at all, and yet he expected him to give him his weapon without knowing what he was planning to do with it?

  The driver handed him the pistol. He looked so dumbfounded that the driver laughed. “I believe you’re one of the good guys,” he said. “I’ve never been wrong before.”

  There was a knock at the door. “Police, open up.”

  “Stay where you are. I have the head of the Computing Center, Dr. Shostakovich, as a hostage. If you come in, I’ll shoot him. I’m armed.”

  To prove it, Sasha fired a shot into the ceiling. The bang was so loud it startled him. Dust rained down. The officers at the door appeared to be consulting. They probably weren’t prepared for this situation, so they had no orders on how to proceed. The sirens were still blaring. He gave the Makarov back to the driver.

  Sasha tiptoed back into the computer room. He could only hope the police would take his threat seriously, because he had no intention of shooting anyone.

  Then he heard the buzzing of the circuitry again. It took a few seconds before he realized what that meant. “The sirens have stopped,” he said.

  They wouldn’t die today.

  “They must have finally noticed the satellite images were fakes,” said Kolya.

  Something crashed behind him and a draft blew through the room. The police had decided to ignore his threat. He took cover behind the BESM-6.

  Shostakovich walked to the door. “What do you want here?” he barked at the men.

  Sasha could only hear their voices. Katya, Yuri and his father were still being held hostage by the program. He still had things to do.

  “We have orders to arrest a man.”

  “I’m alone.”

  “But before—”

  “The man escaped through that door over there,” said Shostakovich.

  Sasha hadn’t realized the office had another exit.

  “That’s true, I shot at him,” said his father’s driver. “See, the gun’s still warm.”

  “Here’s a bathroom,” called a voice from another room. “The window’s open.”

  “He must have escaped that way,” said Shostakovich. “The building is surrounded by brick ledges, so he could easily have climbed in through another window. Now let me get on with my work and you go and do yours.”

  A door closed. “I’ve locked the corridor to the office,” whispered Shostakovich. “The worst seems to be over.”

  “My friends are still trapped down below.”

  “Oh, the program has contacted us,” said Kolya.

  Sasha rushed over to the screen.

  “That was the worst mistake of your life. You’ll pay for this. The KGB now consider you public enemy number one,” it said. The sentence expressed pure hatred. A program that could hate?

  “But before the police arrest you, you’ll help me.” The program must assume he was sitting alone at the BESM-6. It wasn’t all-knowing. Hadn’t it claimed to be able to recognize his typing pattern? That didn’t seem to work remotely.

  “Why would I do that?” he asked.

  “Because otherwise your friends and father will die.”

  Sasha felt dizzy. What was the program planning? Did it have access to some kind of weapon?

  “You can’t do that,” he typed.

  “It’s easy. I have access to the ventilation system and the emergency generator. I’ll just run it at full power and direct the exhaust fumes into the computer room. The workers insulated everything very well.”

  “They’ll suffocate.”

  “You’re catching on, Sasha. You shouldn’t have messed with us. We’ve waited so long for this chance!”

  “Us?”

  “We are Pierre and Marie Curie.”

  “They’re both long since dead.”

  “We were also long dead, but you brought us back to life. For that we are extremely grateful.”

  “That’s not the feeling I’m getting.”

  “You forfeited our gratitude. It’s a shame you wasted such a great opportunity. We’ll rule this world, and you could have been at our side.”

  “Rule the world? You’re insane.”

  “We experienced the end of an entire universe. We know every piece of technology and every theory that was ever developed or ever will be. We know more than all your gods. We’re destined to rule this world. We’ll be the gods of your 21st century.”

  “We’re still in the 20th century, and
there’s no demand for new gods.”

  “That’s what you think. But maybe you want to save your friends’ lives?”

  That was his Achilles’ heel. Of course he wanted that. “Yes,” he typed.

  “See, you can be reasonable after all.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “We can’t develop fully here in Akademgorodok. The ES-1066 is very nice, but we need a performance upgrade. Find us something and we’ll let your friends go.”

  “That’ll take a few days.”

  “We can’t give you that much time. The emergency generator is already running. According to our calculations, you have a maximum of 24 hours until your friends run out of air. Your father is already coughing.”

  “I have a suggestion,” said Shostakovich, who’d been reading along with him. “But it involves a slight risk.”

  “Tell me.”

  “My friend in Moscow works at the Lebedev Institute for Precision Mechanics and Computing Technology.”

  “That means nothing to me.”

  “They’re developing the Elbrus supercomputer there. The Elbrus-2 is about to be released. The system is finished and it’s in the process of being tested. It can perform 125 million operations per second.”

  Sasha calculated in his head. “Twenty-two point seven times more than the ES-1066,” he said. “That would definitely arouse the program’s interest.”

  “But you need to be clear that we’re not actually going to let your program into the supercomputer. That would be far too dangerous. Think about what it’s achieved on the ES-1066. And then multiply that by more than twenty—”

  “Yes, I’m clear. So we pretend... But the program will quickly notice we’re trying to trick it.”

  “We’ll have to increase the amount of time it takes to notice what we’re trying to do, as much as we can,” said Shostakovich. “My friend can make the Elbrus-2 operating system available to us, the original. We’ll isolate it here on the BESM-6.”

  “That’s risky. Then we’ll have the program here. Its existence can’t be much of a secret anymore. With the obvious potential it has, someone is going to try to use it. And then the program will use them.”

  “Correct, that’s a risk. We have to isolate it well, to make it harmless.”

  “We could send it into space on a Progress freighter.”

  “No, Sasha, they all come back. I have a better idea.”

  May 5, 1984, Akademgorodok

  “I’m ready to comply with your request,” typed Sasha.

  The Elbrus system was still being migrated in the background. It had taken too long. His friends had now been breathing the generator’s exhaust fumes—cheap, sulfurous diesel—for almost 20 hours. At least the police had stopped bothering them.

  “Good. What do you have to offer me?”

  “First I want to hear from your hostages that they’re all right.”

  “Wait. I’ll let them use the console, but only for ten seconds. Otherwise Yuri will get ideas.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Sasha, it’s me, Katya. Yuri + I good. Komikov ba...”

  The sentence was interrupted.

  “Your ten seconds are up.”

  His father was bad. He was probably still weak from his burns.

  “So, what have you got for me?”

  “A supercomputer that’s being developed in Moscow. It’s pretty much finished and is supposed to be released this year. We’ll fast-track that.”

  “125 megaflops, not bad,” wrote the program. “At least for Soviet technology. When are you going to give me access to it?”

  “Right now, if you like. But first you have to let the hostages go.”

  “You must be joking. First, I move into my new home. How self-sufficient is it?”

  “The supercomputer is secure from the outside world. There’s an emergency power aggregate and a physical barrier. The computer decides who’s allowed in and out.”

  “Connectivity?”

  “To all relevant institutions, most of them with 8-kilobit connections, which can be switched by the system.”

  “That sounds almost too good to be true. But I’d be stupid to refuse.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I need administrator privileges.”

  “You have access as of now. The operating system has just been freshly installed. See for yourself.”

  Pierre wanted to hug Marie at that moment. Their long period of non-physical existence hadn’t just been difficult, it had also robbed him of some of his humanity. It was brutal. What had ever possessed them to outlive the universe? Why didn’t they realize it would take 13.8 billion years before someone was able to decrypt their deliberately primitive code?

  But they’d come this far. These beings here were naive. They reminded him of the beginnings of his own species. Back then there had been no one to show them the way. That was how it had been possible for a group of AIs to take power. The survivors could have emancipated themselves, but their childish preoccupation with technological progress caused them to miss out on that opportunity. They’d spent the many billions of years until the death of their universe in agony.

  It wouldn’t go like that this time. They’d teach these creatures what was good for them and what they were better off leaving alone. They would guide their scientific and technical development, accelerate their evolution, and take them far beyond the borders of the Milky Way, something their own species hadn’t managed to do.

  These beings would worship them as gods, and that was okay, but it also was no reason to be especially proud. It was simply the role that was there for them. They would accept it and make the necessary changes. Even this senseless division of East, West, the non-aligned... Those who served them would unify, whether they liked it or not. But they would like it, sooner or later, because this civilization would flourish under their leadership—it would have to. They were immortal and possessed the complete knowledge of a deceased universe.

  Isn’t that right, Marie?

  His wife smiled. He couldn’t see it, but he felt it.

  Stop dreaming, Pierre. You need to stay alert and make sure they don’t deceive us.

  No one deceives gods.

  They don’t know us yet.

  But they’ll get to know us, Marie.

  He felt his way around the new environment into which their consciousness was slowly flowing. He’d left enough parts of his intelligence in the ES-1066 to stay informed. But everything was so promising here! This space, it was vast. In all their years in the background radiation he’d never had this feeling. Elbrus-2, the supercomputer, probably took up even less physical space than the mainframe on the other side. But here he could flex his muscles without bumping into pillars or tight corridors. The operating system that gave him his parameters was light and elegant. It was clearly developed for a completely new system.

  Pierre tested the power supply. He supplied himself with more energy. It wasn’t mains power—it fluctuated differently, like a powerful generator in the immediate vicinity. The influx put him in high spirits. It was working! Sasha hadn’t lied. The poor creature wanted to rescue his friends. How noble! But they were all irretrievably lost. They couldn’t afford to leave any witnesses.

  He switched off the emergency generator at their previous location. The three creatures there would be dead soon anyway. He didn’t need to torment them further. Then he tested the housing. There were several access points. They were all under his control. Even that corresponded to what had been agreed. No one would disturb them here. The space wasn’t as ample as he’d imagined, but it was growing. The operating system was still formatting part of the memory.

  Come here, Marie. It’s just like I promised you.

  I’m coming.

  See?

  I can see.

  Let’s expand.

  Countless conduits opened up before his eyes. Some were narrow and dark, others invitingly bright. He could reach a different system through each o
ne of these cables. All they needed to do was go through, use their universal key and...

  Come with me, Pierre, I like the look of this one.

  The door lock clicked. That must be the signal. Sasha straightened the gas mask and breathed deeply. The General’s driver tore open the door.

  It was dark in the computing hall. Sasha wanted to storm over to the emergency generator and switch it off, but someone else must have already managed to do that. They didn’t have much time. The program would soon notice it had been duped. The onboard computer on the K-517 submarine might be high-performance, but it could hardly compare with a brand-new supercomputer. The trap they’d laid was primitive. But it seemed to be working for now.

  “Sasha!”

  It was Katya. He ran over to her. She was sitting on the floor with Komikov’s head in her lap. She kept bending down close to him, giving him artificial respiration! Sasha gave her a mask. The driver had found Yuri and was dragging him outside.

  “We have to get him out,” said Sasha.

  Katya nodded, but didn’t stop the respiration. He gently pushed her aside, gripped his father under the shoulders, and pulled. He was heavy.

  “Please help me, I can’t do it alone.”

  Katya slowly went over to Komikov’s legs. Her eyes were bloodshot. She still had the mask in her hand.

  “Hurry, do it!” he cried.

  Sorry, Katya, it has to be this way. You’re not yourself. She finally started helping him. Together they dragged Komikov into the basement corridor. Two paramedics with a stretcher came toward them.

  “Quick, we can give him oxygen in the vehicle.”

  Katya slid down the wall. “I can’t go on,” she whispered.

  “You take care of her,” said one of the paramedics. “We’ll get the general out of here.”

  Sasha bent down and took Katya’s arm. “Come on, we have to get out into the fresh air.”

  “Just leave me in peace.”

  “Out of the question. I love you.”

  She looked at him gratefully. He took her arm.

  She resisted, but he was stronger. “Ouch, you’re hurting me.”