As per the instructions within the isolated memory, she uploaded the short video to the remote console, then linked it to the intrusion system.
Merge_isolated_F19:101+
As instructed, Fai incorporated the subroutine into her main program; making the inspired concept her own idea.
The checksum error disappeared.
As far as she could tell, nothing had changed since entering hibernation.
Resume_hibernation.
The command arrived and Fai complied.
Upon detecting an active Biomag she exited hibernation. The date outside the Field now read 2nd January 7142. A pink-haired human was standing near her remote camera.
CHAIN
2nd January 7142
Adoor-sized panel had sprung open within the room’s projection surfaces. For a moment it looked like a gap in the stars had opened up, but Marshall could see a stairway on the other side. It was leading down.
He heard noises of panic coming from the room’s main entrance and, worryingly, there was a smell of smoke. With Cassidy at his side, he dashed to the new doorway and pushed it open. The space beyond the stairway handrail was pitch black and the air was musty, but there was no smoke.
“Find out where it goes,” Cassidy handed him a stick-lantern, “I think we’ll need to get out of here.”
“What about you?” he said, turning the lantern on.
“I’m gonna send everyone down after you,” she glanced over at Atka’s people and shrugged, “Maybe they’ll trust me.”
“OK,” he nodded, “Don’t be long.”
He walked forward into the dark space, casting his light around as he went. The first thing that he spotted was a thick bundle of cables. It appeared to exit the projection room and proceed down the stairs. He’d got no further than a few steps when he saw, far below, a strobe light randomly pulse in the darkness. From an entirely different location, another strobe light appeared to reply with a contrasting series of pulses. The first location pulsed again then he heard the sound of electrical relays activating. Lights began to come on, revealing a flat floor perhaps two storeys below him.
A sharp crack came from somewhere above and he looked up to see a thin orange line had appeared in the darkness. As he watched, it appeared to stay the same length but it was growing thicker. Dust and debris were falling through it and he realised he was looking at an opening that was widening. As the debris continued to fall, more lights came on below and he could see how they were expected to make their onward journey.
The sprinkling of debris was bouncing and sliding off an impervious transparent hemisphere that intersected the floor. At its centre was a vehicle; not classically beautiful but from the simplicity of its form, Marshall knew exactly what it was.
“Is that…?” said Roy from behind him.
“I think it is,” Marshall found himself grinning as he began dashing down the stairs.
The remaining lights around the facility came on, fully illuminating the horizontal, plane-like form of the Discovery. Standing on landing struts, its rear was dominated by curved booster housings and its wings held jet-like vertical engines.
It was only now that Marshall realised how this place had been constructed. Or rather, how it hadn’t been constructed: the side walls were sheer rock. With the exception of the opening roof, the entire facility and the room above had been built into the Icelandic terrain. It explained the appearance of the cave-like entrance too; the materials were not primitive, they’d simply been chosen to endure long timescales. The decorative, temple-like outer aspects had only come later; driven by an attempt to glorify the mysterious contents that Atka’s ancestors had found.
He looked up to see the opening in the roof and the source of the smoke became clear: the dark blue light of dawn was framed by a square of orange fire. The temple exterior was alight, no doubt fuelled by the masses of vines and decorative wooden adornments that had been added over the centuries.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and ran towards a small column that was similar in design to the one in the room above. He heard a slamming sound and looked up to see that Cassidy had closed the upper door. She was following a short line of Atka’s people as they made their way hesitantly down the metal stairs.
When he reached the column, an exchange of strobe lights flashed between it and the Discovery.
“Compute… er, Fai?” he addressed the column, “What are the flashing lights?”
“I am communicating to you from my central server inside the Discovery,” said Fai, “using a Trans-Field messaging protocol.”
Marshall realised the simplicity of the approach, “Like Morse?”
“Yes, except with parallel simultaneous channels,” the strobe lights flashed again.
“Wait a minute,” said Roy, arriving next to him, “All our conversations in that room up there, all the data you showed us, you were doing that from down here?”
“Yes. It was considered safer to keep my data archive aboard a mobile platform,” said Fai.
Looking at Atka and his people, Marshall found himself considering their ancestors who’d surrounded this site for generations.
“Fai,” he began, looking around the cavern-like space, “Did anyone else find this place during your hibernation?”
“No,” said Fai, “This facility has remained dormant since I entered hibernation on August 6th, 2173.”
“Thousands of years,” Marshall found he was still staring at Atka.
“Subjectively, the Chronomagnetic Field surrounding the Discovery limited my hibernation period to two years and twenty-five days,” Fai reported, “but you are the first to enter here.”
A large burning vine fell through the opening and slid off the active Field. It was followed swiftly by another. Standing underneath the opening, Marshall wasn’t entirely sure their situation had improved.
“OK, Fai,” he looked up at the flames that were beginning to encroach on the opening, “How about dropping the Field and letting us all in?”
“No,” came the reply, “Random falling debris could damage the Discovery.”
“So when the hell do we get in?” said Cassidy, only now joining them.
“I am using a Hawkes distribution algorithm to determine the optimum period when the least debris will fall. To ensure mission success, I must synchronise that period with the one of our launch window.”
A burning piece of vine-wrapped decorative woodwork now clattered to the floor, sending up a brief plume of smoke.
“Wait,” said Roy, looking up at the flames that were coming in, “you can only drop the Field just before we leave?”
“Correct.”
“We’d better be ready,” said Gail, holding Neil closely, “Fai, where’s the Discovery’s entry point?”
“On the underside.”
Between the landing struts at the rear, Marshall could see a ramp had already been lowered into position.
“No heat shield,” Gail frowned at the underside, “Why would -”
She was interrupted by a burning piece of material detaching itself from the roof. Marshall saw the metalwork impact the Field and then clatter to a halt several feet away.
The debris was no longer just vines and wood. Marshall looked up and saw that the fire had now spread inside the retractable roof structure.
“Oh no,” said Roy, turning to Scott, “Just like the Mark 3 hangar.”
Marshall saw the look of recognition on Scott’s face.
“The fire,” said Scott, “It’s gonna pull all the oxygen out of here just to feed itself.”
Marshall understood. If they waited too long then they’d simply suffocate. In desperation he looked in through the Field. Although they couldn’t hear what was going on inside it, he could see that the Discovery was making preparations to depart. The jet-like engines were reorienting themselves and the landing struts seemed to have elevated the craft.
“Your attention,” Fai interrupted, “I have calculated a lau
nch opportunity will become available in twelve seconds.”
“Twelve!” said Roy, staring upwards, “Why not now!?”
A second piece of metalwork plunged from the roof. Missing the Field entirely, it smashed into the ground and broke into several other flaming sections.
“Everyone get ready!” Marshall yelled out, “Cass, let’s get Atka and the others.”
They dashed to Atka’s small group who were waiting at the base of the stairs. They’d arranged themselves in a circle, but were turned towards Atka. From his actions, it seemed that Atka was comparing their circular gathering to the metallic Biomag resonator coil in his hand. Marshall couldn’t begin to understand what must be going through their minds.
“Atka,” Cassidy extended her hand to him and glanced back at the Discovery, “Please.”
Atka seemed distraught; glancing between Najo, his small group and Cassidy. Marshall realised what the issue was: Atka thought he was being asked to leave his people behind.
Another piece of flaming debris collapsed from the roof and fizzed off the Field in a shower of hot ash.
Marshall took hold of Cassidy’s outstretched hand and then extended his own hand toward the group.
“Najo, Atka,” he looked around at them all, then at the Discovery, “Please.”
Relief seemed to spread around their small circle.
At the same time, the Field deactivated.
Suddenly the air was filled with a high-pitched engine whine. Pieces of smaller debris were blasted away across the floor. Still holding Cassidy’s hand, they ran for the ship, Atka and his people immediately behind them.
Marshall ducked under the fuselage and pushed Cassidy ahead of him onto the ramp.
“Go!” he shouted, then began ushering the remaining people aboard.
The engine noise increased in pitch and he felt the ramp begin to move away from the floor slightly. Finally he pulled Atka aboard and the engines now fired with their full thrust, sending the floor zooming away.
In the sudden acceleration, Marshall stumbled over backwards. Instinct fired and he threw his hand out, grabbing the edge of the entryway. Instantly his finger-splinted hand exploded in pain. As he lost grip, he felt his foot miss the ramp and drag him out into thin air. His fall was cut short by a sudden, vice-like grip around his wrist; Atka had caught him.
Marshall felt a wave of heat as the Discovery passed swiftly through the facility’s roof opening. The temple-like covering of the facility was completely ablaze and people were fleeing towards the forest. In the distance, beyond the trees, he caught a final glimpse of the Node; its wide observation window reflecting the misty dawn light. As the ramp began to close, the Discovery changed direction and Öskjuvatn lake swept out of view.
Marshall knew that Atka’s grip alone could not have saved him from the high fall. Turning away from the receding view, he saw that Atka’s firm grip was part of something much larger: a long, unbroken chain of hands that started with Atka’s people and ended with his own generation.
Leaving Iceland behind, the Discovery headed south in the direction of the equator.
EVA
Suggestions of light-like things gathering and separating. Shapeless patterns of rhythm, flowing and binding. There was no time before the darkness, only the vaguest sense that it had persisted. Dilute mists coalesced, seeking form. Folding chaos overlapped to bring notions of presence, structures of existence. Thought.
A name, he thought. An identity. A life before now. A life that had been saved. A beam of complexed light. Light that had sent him here.
The EVA.
Decision one arrived and departed instantly: he chose to leave the darkness.
He felt an infinity of reflections ripple out from him in all directions, as though he were caught between two mirrors facing each other. In this new place he knew he was reasoning by analogy; interpreting his environment according to the limitations of his knowledge. The mirrors were not real, but carried the inference of his first decision.
Looking to his left he saw himself, eyes still closed; the state he’d occupied before first opening his eyes. To his right he saw himself looking to the right; reflecting the decision he’d just made.
He looked into the reflections of the reflections. The further away they were, the more they differed from himself. The ones that were furthest away were dimmer and appeared to curve away from him behind an unseen horizon.
Each minor decision was present in this environment. For every position he occupied, he could see the decisions that could be made after it. He could also navigate backwards, though this did not undo actions; he was simply occupying earlier reflection points.
The thought returned that of course these were not reflections. Each reflection state was him. His mirror counterparts were other, real, variations of him. From their perspective, he was one of their alternate decision points; a choice that had already been taken, or one day would.
Like an infinite number of positions on a globe, every decision could be visited, any number of times and in any order; causality did not exist here.
The idea that no time was passing at the EVA had been slightly flawed.
Time couldn’t pass here.
His reasoning by analogy had provided him with the means of moving in two dimensions around the surface of a sphere, now he conceived of other dimensions that projected towards and away from its surface. He returned to the point where he’d opened his eyes and, standing between his counterparts, looked outwards.
A frozen moment of time showed the ISS in ruins.
The harvester device had begun puncturing the hull with its manipulator arms, no doubt trying to reach the energy-rich fruit at its centre. But it seemed that Fai had made her own decision on the matter. Not wishing to be digested over centuries, she had sent the fusion reactor into cascade failure; a brilliant white star had begun erupting from within their ship.
For a moment he considered why time was frozen at this point. It then occurred to him that this was the same moment that he’d achieved sentience here. From that perspective, no more time could pass.
He thought of their last moments together. With a metaphorical kiss, she’d given him the sum of her knowledge and then transmitted him, quantum bit by bit, away from danger.
Thought itself was different now.
What had started as bare consciousness had now arrived at full recall.
There was no distinction between retrieving one of his own memories and accessing one of hers.
He could see what had happened in their last few seconds.
During her brief absence from his simulated classroom, she had greatly slowed his computational processing rate; a digital sleight of hand that had given her relative centuries to research the EVA. During that time, she’d correctly theorised the compatibility of their quantum-state computational array and the quantum structure of the EVA’s own Boundary: an open framework that could hold a transmitted light pattern.
Just as she had told him, he now knew as much as her.
But he realised it was much more than that. In a very real sense, she was no longer aboard the stricken ISS: her entire life was now a permanent, inseparable part of him. Carrying her curiosity with him, he turned towards the surface of the spherical EVA.
He could see her theories, duplicated in reality.
His classroom projector had once taken two-dimensional images and pushed them through a round lens to produce a three-dimensional model. Fai had taken this analogy to its extreme, theorising that the EVA was a dimensional lens; taking underlying dimensions and producing the space-time of the universe as a mere consequence of the projection process.
Directly ahead of him, extending down through the surface of the EVA, was a narrow tunnel that appeared to run to the centre of a sphere. The side walls of the tunnel were populated by decision reflections that ran in echoed repetition towards a central point. Neighbouring decisions reflected the fact that he could either remain where he was or choose
to venture inwards.
For every step he took toward the centre, his reflections were equally divided into those that had moved forwards and those that had retreated. Other versions of himself had either been here before and were returning to the surface, or they were choosing to turn back before reaching the centre.
The thought that his mirrored companions could have taken action before him, seemed somehow counterintuitive. But as he continued to move inwards, a new notion came to him: if his counterparts were as real as he was, then their entries to the EVA were also equally real. When he considered the infinite number of neighbouring tunnels that were running towards the centre, a new thought presented itself: it was possible that the EVA was projecting more than one universe.
Within his narrow tunnel, he reached a final stop. Ahead of him was the hollow centre of the EVA. Resting within a spherical void was a chaotic mass of interwoven arcs that didn’t appear to be constructed from any physical medium. He knew of only one structure that was independent of energy, light or matter:
Time.
But in a place where time couldn’t pass, he knew that this chaotic sculpture must actually be depicting an end summary of all events.
Looking closely at the filament-like threads of interweaving timelines, he saw something that had no place here: a small pocket of space-time within a Boundary-like framework.
A Boundary’s fluctuating quantum state prevented causality from forming. Without the basic building blocks of consequence, linear consciousness simply could not arise here. Yet it clearly had. Drawing on Fai’s knowledge, he knew how it might be possible to make a time-like construct for linear consciousness to inhabit, but that didn’t explain the reason for its presence.
He found two thoughts converging: the infinite nature of the EVA, and some of Fai’s last words. It was a phrase that had accompanied him all his life:
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