Proxima Trilogy: Part 1-3: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Could it be that the ship is controlled by an inoperative AI?”

  “Yes, Adam, that’s what I also think,” Marchenko says.

  “If the AI is inoperative, how can it steer such a huge ship?” Eve adds. “Did you see the acceleration data? These are far beyond what human technology is capable of. And wouldn’t the control system simply fail?”

  Adam looks at the map. It displays some kind of symbols, but no velocity values he can read. He slaps his hand against his forehead. Eve must have calculated based on the ship’s starting position.

  “That is a real contradiction,” Marchenko says. “I just don’t know how I can ask Gronolf about details concerning the AI of the spaceship.”

  Eve scratches the side of her head. “It’s obvious,” she says, “that the AI is not defective. Perhaps the parallels to Marchenko 2 are closer than we assume? What if the AI has rebelled against its creators?”

  Marchenko raises his arm, allowing Gronolf to see the display again. Then he makes two giant frogs appear, and a huge cube which fires lasers at them.

  “Yes,” Gronolf says, one of the words the alien learned yesterday. The drawing has worked.

  “So,” Marchenko replies, which probably means ‘yes’ in the alien language.

  Step 1 is behind them. Adam takes a deep breath. The problem has been identified—a recalcitrant AI. Now they only need a plan. Marchenko becomes active and draws the number 1 on the panel. The alien confirms the number by tracing it. Marchenko must have already taught him some basic numbers.

  Gronolf steps up to the holo-map. He acts as if he would take the planet into his two touch-arms and carry it to the ship.

  “That gesture is obvious—we have to fly there,” Adam says. The others nod.

  “So,” Marchenko says.

  Then Gronolf draws a 2 in the air and then by turns points at Marchenko and the ship, without moving from his position. Then he repeats two words several times: “Marchenko. Grunuko-to. Marchenko. Grunuko-to.”

  “I have no idea what that word means,” Marchenko apologizes.

  “Maybe he wants you to take over for the ship’s AI,” Eve suggests.

  “Or I should disable it.”

  “So,” Gronolf says.

  “So,” Marchenko says.

  “So,” the alien replies, and his eyelids jump wildly up and down. Adam watches him with his arms crossed. Now the alien does not look threatening anymore, even though he is much bigger and could stomp him with one foot.

  Adam is about to suggest they start looking for a suitable vehicle for this mission, when Gronolf draws a 3 into the air. So the plan is supposed to have three parts?

  “So,” Marchenko says, obviously to encourage him. Now the alien virtually takes the ship in both hands, zooms out of the image, and carries it to a binary star.

  “Dutoka-so,” he says.

  “Alpha Centauri,” Marchenko automatically translates, but Adam remembers the word. He has to sit down. Does Gronolf want to take them to his home world, once he regains control of the ship? That would be… Adam does not know what to think about it. A completely new world—and at the same time one in which they would spend the rest of their lives among giant frogs.

  “Did you also interpret this as an offer to take us to Alpha Centauri?” he asks quietly.

  “Looks like it,” Eve whispers.

  May 10, 19, Marchenko

  In theory the plan looks good: Travel to the Majestic Draght, convince the Omniscience to cooperate, and then leave. However, they lack an important tool—a means of transportation! Marchenko considers the options. Their vehicle does not have to be particularly fast, because their target is moving toward them. However, they would have more time on board the ‘Great Youth’ the sooner they reach the enormous ship. They picked a nice name, Marchenko thinks, even though he is not sure how correctly he translated it.

  Perhaps Gronolf still has a rocket standing around in some hangar? The aliens must have landed here somehow. Marchenko tries to put his question in pictures. Now he is annoyed the screen on his arm isn’t larger. He alerts Gronolf to his attempt and has a few screen pixels fly back and forth between the planet and the spaceship.

  “So-na,” the alien says, a negation, and he waves his two load arms to the side, which probably corresponds to shaking his head. Then he moves his right touch-arm to his shoulder and turns around. This probably indicates they should follow him. What is he up to?

  Gronolf only walks a few steps and then stops at the chair where Marchenko found him this morning. He leads Marchenko directly in front of it and then pushes his shoulders down. Marchenko sits down obediently.

  Gronolf touches a waist-high cabinet, from which a control panel folds out. He types in something. Suddenly a kind of cap falls from the bottom of the console. It is connected to the cabinet via several cables. Gronolf unfolds it and places it on the middle of his belly. It adapts perfectly to the shape. Is this some kind of diagnostic device, maybe for ultrasound? On the other hand, such a device would be out of place in the control center. Maybe it is able to transmit data, like an EEG helmet. They still know too little about the aliens’ physiology. Marchenko automatically assumed their thinking organ was in the upper part of the torso, probably between the two arms, even though there is no head. However, there is no factual reason for that. There is space everywhere, and thinking requires little room.

  Now Gronolf removes the soft cap from his belly. There is a snapping sound when he pulls it off his skin. He takes it in his touch-arms, examines it, checks the cable length, and stretches the material slightly. Then he gets up, steps in front of Marchenko, and carefully, almost reverently, places the cap on Marchenko’s belly.

  I hope I won’t make a mistake now, Marchenko thinks. Whatever this object is for, nothing will happen if he just leaves it on his torso. Nevertheless, he waits for a minute. Maybe the thing is just meant to give him a pleasant massage, nothing else.

  Nothing happens, and Gronolf seems to be getting nervous, as his front eye is blinking. The cap must have a different purpose, and the EEG function seems to be the most likely one. Marchenko can only find that out by testing it. The problem is that he is definitely not sensitive for the electromagnetic waves used to stimulate the alien’s nerves. The cap won’t function as an EEG helmet for him. He needs the original form of the data that Gronolf wants to transmit to him. First he would have to destroy the cap. Hopefully, there are no important alien religious or cultural ideas attached to it! Now that they are getting along so well with him, he'd rather not risk that. He also has no clue how to explain to Gronolf what he is planning to do.

  It can’t be helped. Sometimes you have to take a risk if you want to get ahead. Marchenko takes the cap in one hand and the cable in the other. He suddenly rips the connection. Gronolf jumps up but does not say anything. Marchenko keeps his eyes on the alien’s dangerous load-arms. Yet the extraterrestrial allows him to proceed.

  Marchenko examines the cable. It contains transparent fibers below a plastic-like covering. It seems to transfer data optically, in the form of light. Marchenko opens a flap on the left side of his torso. There the nano-fabricators have provided various inputs, including ones for optical signals. He will probably have to adapt them once the cable is connected with his body.

  He involuntarily imagines giving a monstrous AI access to his body this way. Of course that is a silly idea, but the image is vivid and makes him pause briefly. He notices Gronolf watching him intently. He does not sense any hostility, so he closes the connection. As expected, he first has to adjust the frequencies and the signal strength and then find out which modulation is used. The alien technology employs an extremely high clock speed. If he cannot slow down the rushing data stream, it will flood him like a tsunami. He can only hope the aliens thought of something like a feedback loop so that a weaker receiver can lower the value.

  Five minutes later the technical adaptation is finished. Via the cable he receives a clean test signal now, w
hich shows him a silver ellipse with two green focal points. It is interesting that the aliens also encode numbers in a binary system, even though they count based on a system of seven. He found out that the data stream contains three-dimensional images, 45 of which are transmitted per second. This might correspond to the abilities of the aliens’ visual system, which then would be much more capable of perceiving movement than human eyes are. The audio data reaches all the way to ultrasound.

  In addition there are two additional data streams he cannot assign. They probably correspond to other senses, perhaps smell and touch? As he lacks the necessary perception due to his different anatomy, he cannot evaluate these data streams. Therefore he ignores them. The cap definitely is a sophisticated construct. When Gronolf uses it, he might be able to directly visualize the past.

  “So,” he says loudly in Gronolf’s direction.

  “So,” the alien replies. He leans over the control panel and starts typing.

  The first flood of images is so exhausting Marchenko is glad to be sitting in a comfortable chair. What he sees is absolutely foreign. His consciousness needs considerably more time to process each image than usual. If he still were human, he would probably react with nausea or panic. Yet he lets the flood sweep over him and picks images to analyze in intervals he can handle. This means that he misses some information during the first minutes, but he will have to live with that.

  Marchenko lands with both legs on a planet the likes of which he has never seen before. The ground is soft, the atmosphere is warm, and two suns shine in a green sky. Only the vegetation seems hostile, probably because a bilious green color has replaced the soft green of Earth.

  He has no time to get used to this environment. Suddenly he is in the middle of a gathering of the inhabitants that he immediately recognizes as Gronolf’s siblings. He follows their conversations. His mind is swamped by the alien language, and he finally has so much material that the development of a linguistic model is only a question of time. He assigns part of his resources to that task so that he can continue focusing on the images. The system appears to give him a historical overview of this civilization, and the language center already provides the first translations. It is overwhelming to discover so many parallels to developments on Earth, but also so many different paths taken by this civilization.

  Now he is on board a spaceship. He notices this right away by the change in gravity. It is the Majestic Draght, as he now knows, and his initial translation of the name was not that far off. The ship is on the way to Single Sun—Proxima Centauri in his language—where the Grosnops have discovered a planet that might be suitable for colonization.

  Marchenko carefully observes the growing alienation between the AI and the crew. The idea of subjecting artificial and natural intelligences to the same rules might sound just, but he already knows what effects it had in this case. Marchenko sees the hopeless struggle of the crew against the Omniscience and the landing of the Grosnops on this planet. He watches the construction of the building in the ice and the attempt of a part of the crew to return to Dual Sun using small shuttles. Now he also knows it won’t be easy to subdue the alien AI.

  A warning signal returns Marchenko to the present. Now 90 percent of the free memory in his body has been filled. He is no Omniscience and will never become one, as he lacks the resources. It will be hard to get rid of at least two-thirds of the knowledge he just acquired. Marchenko is already running algorithms to separate important information from unimportant. He keeps the linguistic ability. Now they can finally talk to Gronolf without any obstacles.

  First, one critical question must be answered: Where can they get a rocket to take them to the alien spaceship?

  Brightnight 37, 3876

  Gronolf barely managed to control himself when Marchenko ripped apart the metal archive-interface equipment. Of course it is his own fault, because he handed it to this stranger. However, he had no idea Marchenko would simply destroy the most powerful hardware available in the control center. While the contactless sonar access to the archive—which he himself used yesterday—provides mostly impressions, the ventral cap allows one to call up absolutely everything from the archive.

  ‘Allowed,’ Gronolf corrects himself. Or should he ask Marchenko to repair the cap? After all, the machine managed to connect the cables to his own body, which is based on a completely different technology. It would be best to wait and see whether and how Marchenko has processed the data he has received. Gronolf uses the control panel to unlock the most important information about the Grosnops and their journey.

  “How can we best reach the Majestic Draght?”

  Marchenko has surprised him again. He can already speak the Grosnop language flawlessly! Gronolf gestures with his hand, expressing appreciation, as he thinks maybe it’s not so awful that the AI tore the equipment apart.

  Adam and Eve come running. The machine seems to translate its words to Grosnop simultaneously now. “All our shuttles set course for the Dual Sun,” Gronolf says. “Don’t you have a ship? You must have arrived here in one.”

  “Unfortunately, we destroyed our ship to clear the way into the shelter building,” the AI informs him.

  “Why?”

  “The ice layer on top had become too thick.”

  “Couldn’t you have melted it?”

  “We were in a great hurry.”

  “You cut off any possibility of a return journey. That’s bad tactics.”

  “For us, the return journey was already made impossible at launch.”

  What does Marchenko mean by that? This sounds like a potentially interesting story, thought Gronolf. He loves stories, but this one will have to wait until later.

  “Then our mission has failed,” Gronolf says. He still cannot quite believe it. Two civilizations previously unknown to each other meet on a faraway planet, and then they have no opportunity to return to space? That is surreal. Gronolf starts waving his load-arms and walks through the control room.

  “We could try once more to contact the Omniscience,” Marchenko says. “Perhaps we could smuggle me on board, meaning my consciousness?”

  “The Omniscience does not react at all to our messages.”

  “And if I try it, from one artificial intelligence to the other?”

  “Are you really an AI?” Gronolf is surprised, as so far he had thought he was dealing with a robot, a machine.

  “If I only knew exactly!”

  “You do not know what you are?”

  “I am based on a human consciousness. It’s a long story. Yet I was changed, so I have many abilities of an AI.”

  “In my civilization, this would have been unethical,” Gronolf says. However, he remembered, there had been a few Knowledge Scientists who suggested such a method. Who could know whether the Omniscience would have betrayed them in this case? Might it have then understood its creators better?

  “In my civilization, such a hybridization is also considered unethical. However, there are always some scientists who want to try out anything that is possible,” Marchenko explains.

  “The result is positive, I would say.”

  “Oh, well...” Marchenko says, then quickly turns aside.

  Gronolf actually meant his statement as a compliment, but he seems to have hit a sore spot. Marchenko seems to miss his humanity. Perhaps the Life Scientists of his people could give him the healthy body of a Grosnop. Marchenko certainly would not want to be one of those fragile creatures with that ugly growth above the arms. What probably matters most to him is to enjoy life in its biological form, the boisterous strength of a young body, the joy of diving into the cold, salty water of the ocean. He shakes his belly, as this idea is so attractive.

  Then Gronolf turns around and walks to the holo-map. “Come, Marchenko,” he calls. At the same time he starts typing on the segmented keyboard. He selects the ship and activates the voice communication. “We can get started.”

  Marchenko looks around, as if searching for something. It must
be really impractical only to have eyes on one side. Marchenko can change his configuration, so why doesn’t he get rid of the shortcomings of human anatomy?

  “My name is Marchenko,” the robot starts saying. As if on command the two humans also move closer. “I am a representative of humanity, a civilization which has developed four lightyears from here.”

  An interesting introduction, Gronolf thinks. If the Omniscience shows any interest in the universe, it should react to this.

  “I know your creators call you the Omniscience. As this can’t be an accurate description of your state due to physical reasons, I assume the name expresses your desires to always gain new knowledge.”

  An interesting strategy—but it does not fit the fact that the Omniscience has been inactive for many, many cycles, Gronolf thinks.

  “I can fully understand this desire, because it is also my driving force. I don’t even know the exact reason for it. Perhaps it was implanted in me by my creators, similar to you. Or it could be part of my human nature. I resemble you, but I am also different, because I am not a pure Omniscience but a hybrid AI. Would you be interested in exchanging information?”

  Marchenko really manages to make the Omniscience an attractive offer. Gronolf does not know what else would get it interested in starting a conversation. He carefully watches the communication channel to the ship, but there is no sign of a message coming the other way.

  “For this purpose, though, we have to talk to each other now. Right now, your ship is hurtling toward the planet I am staying on and will destroy it a few days from now. I would like to save the two humans here, and the numerous members of the race that created you, from that fate.”

  Perfect reasoning—but there is no reply from the other side. Gronolf basically knew it would be so. The Omniscience is beyond any understanding, utterly mysterious. Nobody can guess how it will behave.