by Geoff Wolak
‘Cool. How fast can you fly?’
‘In which environment, sir?’
‘Through … the air.’
‘My speed is limited only by friction with the air, since I can slowly accelerate towards escape velocity and beyond, but would leave a heat trail and wake.’
‘And … in space?’
‘My anti-gravity engine applies to the strong gravity around the earth, but beyond the gravity well it provides little acceleration. My ion drive would slowly accelerate me towards light speed over a period of nine months, but the efficiency of that engine would be diminished the further away I travelled, whilst being greatly enhanced closer to the Sun.’
Jimmy eased forwards. ‘Dark Star could circle the sun and pick up speed, then head out of the solar system.’
‘Correct, sir.’
‘Weapons?’ I asked.
‘My primary weapon is a particle beam, sir. I collect solar radiation, and particles in space, and can then direct them towards a target.’
‘Like a big old electric shock,’ I suggested.
‘That would be a suitable analogy, sir. I also possess a powerful EMP weapon, a laser, and a rail-gun.’
‘Rail gun?’ I queried.
‘Yes, sir. I have a limited number of projectiles, just thirty, but each is of a very dense material surrounded by an alloy. Initial acceleration is produced by an explosive, after which the rail-gun accelerates the projectile towards thirty thousand miles per hour in a vacuum. The accelerator tube is fifty two feet long.’
‘A great deal of kinetic energy,’ Jimmy suggested. ‘One of those projectiles would go straight through Slumber’s ship, its impact wake tearing a big hole. Fired in the atmosphere, the wake could pull a plane’s wings off.’
‘We detected this ship approaching,’ I noted.
‘Atmospheric restrictions,’ Jimmy said. ‘Nothing can be done. But if it moves slowly, with the wind direction, it could approach unseen.’ Jimmy put a hand over his eyes. ‘Dark Star, do you see the fighter jets above?’
‘Yes, sir, a squadron of six F29D’s, lead pilot Captain Joshua Blenke.’
‘Without using stealth mode, go chase them for ten minutes, and stay on their tails, but do not risk a collision or endanger life. After, go test Chinese air defences, followed by Russian, then American.’
‘As you request, sir. Please move back to a safe distance.’
The ship lifted up a hundred feet, nosed up and accelerated away, soon heading after the fighters.
‘My money is on Dark Star,’ Jimmy said. ‘And, once the various air defence systems have been tested, it will begin a patrol pattern in orbit, looking out for bogeys.’ We turned back towards the house.
‘And the three bogeys heading for the Seethan world?’
‘We’ll have a portal ready by then, and Dark star will meet and greet them,’ Jimmy said with a smile. ‘Slumber’s ship has a similar weapon, in that it collects solar radiation and particles, and can direct them, but our ship has been designed to absorb such a weapon, or deflect it across the ship’s skin like a big old lightning rod.’
‘Who gets control of it?’ I asked.
‘For now, partly myself, partly a consortium. But, as a threat to a nation it’s very limited. It could shoot down fighters, but might be damaged from a missile or 30mm cannon, and could not attack a ground target or a city, so no one is concerned about it.’ He grinned. ‘They all want one, and to play with it, but no one is concerned that it’s a threat.’
‘And the rest of the toys?’
‘Will arrive here in a few days.’
Back at the house we caught the news, images of the ship flashed around the world, and soon around many worlds.
I asked, ‘Can its anti-gravity engine be used for space flight?’
‘Sure, Dark Star could patrol the Solar System. Anyway, next week we’ll see a portal launch here.’
‘Yes, I heard, a Moon landing module, fully automated. It has water, food and power cells.’
‘On Baldy’s world they have one, a larger version, kept secret for now.’
‘Why secret?’
‘If someone is watching us, they’ll have a few different worlds to consider,’ Jimmy suggested. ‘Slumber’s people may be here. I don’t think so, but it’s a possibility. But what I do believe … is that Slumber’s people have portal technology, and they’ve been to many parallel Earths, and screwed around. And that flu virus on the Seethan world, I often wonder if that was Slumber’s predecessor, and those coming are to replace him, kind of a rolling programme.’
‘That would make sense,’ I agreed. ‘Keep replacing the staff.’
‘Dark Star will check our solar system. It builds up power, then creates a burst of particles that are just like those from the Sun. Then it moves position to see if those particles bounce off anything. It’s a kind of radar, but stealthy; it looks like background radiation.’
‘Expensive ship?’
‘In man hours, yes, but we haven’t paid the man hours. In materials and parts, not really. They spent a great deal of time thinking, debating, and testing, and a small amount of time building it. They created a computer model, and had the entire ship all worked out long before they decided to build one. Things over there sound pretty good, in that research is leaping ahead; tens of thousands of people cross-checking each others’ work. Every wire had a hundred people just on the wire. And the skin, that was partly down to our old tank armour from Antwerp.’
‘It was?’
‘A smart scientist built a layered armour that was porous, but only porous for very small particles. The outer layer lets through EM radiation, which the various layers below absorb and convert. The radiation goes through, but the armour is solid. That thing could ram Slumber’s ship … and squish it.’
‘Cool.’
Our new toy, Dark Star, buzzed the Chinese for a day, followed by invading Russian airspace, and finally American airspace. And, when it adopted the local wind speed and followed the air current, it disappeared. We had no way of detecting our own stealth ship, a worry to some. On Jimmy’s instructions, the ship appeared over many city centres, being filmed, before climbing away to patrol our solar system, reports sent back to NASA and to New Kinshasa.
At the mansion, I had the details of Dark Star’s inner workings sent across to me, since I had no idea just what the heck an ‘anti-gravity engine’ was, and I was curious. I liked new toys, and I liked to know how they worked. I selected the right section, and opened the document, soon finding a schematic of the inside of the craft, and finding that there were literally dozens of circular tubes of varying sizes. The largest was five metres long, and was positioned laterally down the middle of the craft, but most sat vertically.
I highlighted one, and expanded the image, soon seeing an assembly of magnets around an oval-shaped cylinder. One side of the cylinder was surrounded by electro-magnets that worked like a rail-gun, the other side displaying smaller electro-magnets and fixed magnets. At the top left of the cylinder sat a device labelled as ‘Matter Infusion’, and I tapped the screen to expand its detail, soon reading the notes in a side panel.
The matter infuser created dense particles that shot out, accelerated by the electro-magnets, and those particles journeyed round and round the cylinder at close to the speed of light. Once started up, the device would never normally be shut off, the particles always whizzing around. The rail-gun on the left tried to push the particles down, creating an upwards force, and the weaker magnets on the opposite side pushed the opposite way, trying to slow down the particles.
At the bottom of the cylinder sat another infuser, only this one bombarded the particles with heavy neutrons as the particles shot past, the collisions causing atoms to split apart. The constituent particles of those atoms hated to be left alone too long, and so recombined with the other floating bits of atoms in a micro-second. But that micro-second took the whizzing particles from the bottom of the cylinder to the top – all carefully ti
med, and I smiled.
When the particles were moving down the one side of the cylinder they were of a normal mass, and a certain mass. That mass was not great, but the particles were moving very quickly. Newton’s Laws applied, and a small upwards pressure was applied on the craft. That upwards pressure was counterbalanced by the particles on the opposite side of the cylinder, who caused a downwards pressure, cancelling out any effect that the cylinder might have on the ship.
But as the heavy particles were bombarded with other particles, they split apart at the atomic level, and their mass and density was altered. The mass of the sum of the parts did not equal the mass of total in this engine. The mass of the particles whizzing upwards in the cylinder was slightly less than the mass of the particles whizzing down, and therefore upwards pressure was created on the cylinder assembly, and on the craft. The difference in mass of the particles was tiny, but when multiplied by the speed of light it was significant. The downside was that the electro-magnets and infusers needed constant energy, and that energy came primarily from solar radiation, a backup micro nuclear reactor on hand if need be.
Dark Star was overcoming gravity by shooting very small but dense particles in a downwards direction. But, since the particles were moving at the speed of light, you didn’t need many particles. The clever part was not Newton getting hit on the head by a falling apple, it was the particle creator and infuser system, which created a temporary alteration of the density and mass of a particle, a brief moment in time in which to fool gravity.
A traditional historic rocket fired hot gases out of its rear at six to ten thousand miles per hour, and it displaced tonnes of fuel, some of the benefit being the ‘push’ against the air behind it inside our atmosphere, the rest being Newton’s Laws. Dark Star’s miniature engines used less than a gram of matter each, but fired it off at the speed of light. And Dark Star as a craft weighed little compared to a traditional rocket, which was ninety-five percent fuel anyway.
A portal opened in Mawlini a week later, some four thousand people returning from Jimmy’s old world. Various bits of kit were carried through or driven through, including components for a portal on the Moon. People greeted old friends around New Kinshasa in the days that followed, many a lively party going on to the small hours. I greeted many of the volunteers, and they explained some of the new devices and weapons.
Seems that the standard laser rifle now had a few new additions, including a wide-range EM scanner, and an enhanced body scanner; you could point your rifle at a person and get an image, thereby checking if they were human. Power cells had been improved, as had the power of the laser discharged.
Oddly enough, some of these people had been working on the drugs and games used by the miscreant survivors from Antarctica. The drugs had been analysed every which way, and a non-addictive form had been created, milder properties to the original - and with no hang-over. The game had also been altered a great deal, and then greatly improved with parallel processing computers.
One of the games’ first uses was for a structured walk-through of Dark Star, where you appeared as a person two feet tall. Each element and dimension of the ship was accurate, and a few hours inside might reveal a design fault or produce an idea. A person could also appear full-size, and fly the ship long distance, or into combat. Tens of thousand of hours had been spent by pilots testing the ship in mock simulations, including my son Toby.
Toby had flown Dark Star many times, including around the Moon and around the Sun, and I was jealous. Concerned as a parent, but also jealous as hell. I was less jealous when I heard about the cramped conditions, and how waste was disposed off. Much of the time he just sat and watched the screens as Dark Star flew high altitude missions to chase other craft, including new fighter variants, or even missiles.
The scientists had developed a new scanner that could detect Dark Star approaching earth, just about, and now possessed scanners that could easily find the ship inside our gravity well or in the atmosphere itself. The neutron cannon was bulky, and could not be moved very easily, but they were working on smaller versions. Even so, a single cannon in Africa could knock down a ship in orbit approaching the earth, so the toy covered a wide area of sky. Dark Star was hit several times in orbital tests, and sustained damage each time. There was no defence against the cannon.
Drones had advanced as well, flying with better solar-power converters, a spin-off from Dark Star. Those drones could now take more of a beating, and could deliver more of a punch, and each now had a limited artificial intelligence which would kick in if the link with base was lost, or if base was destroyed. By themselves, those new drones could have probably detected and downed Slumber’s ship.
Dark Star benefited from artificial intelligence, a programme that had been adapted from a kind of kid’s game. That game monitored and interacted with autistic kids, and learned all about their moods, needs, expressions and meanings. An enhanced version of that game could suck-up ideas, and a team of people sat down for a year and gave it those ideas, as well as instructions, scenarios and outcomes, aims and objectives. When happy with the basic principles, a team of some four thousand people worked on the AI, and every line of instruction was checked many times, a huge repository created, a clever interface designed.
Dark Star’s AI could not just play chess, or fly a stealth aircraft, it could have a sensible conversation, and it had accumulated tens of thousands of conversations into its matrix. When you spoke, it analysed the words to see if there was an exact match, or just a near match. The meaning would be analysed, the previous indicated responses compared, priorities and objectives ranked, and a response formulated. By time the ship was built, Dark Star was assisting with the design of it and, once loaded into the ship, spent months reporting readouts, or aspects of the ship. It assisted with its own adjustments, like the fitting of a new suit.
But big brother to Dark Star was Mobius, a static computer that paralleled Dark Star, but contained more information. Mobius was switched on in the third year, and took intelligent control of a mess, a mess of ideas, people and resources. Many people had found themselves idle, others had too much work. A few people that were over-qualified received menial tasks, and those not suited received complex tasks. Mobius was a giant recruitment agency, matching jobs to skills. It came with a voice interface, and was updated by two hundred thousand people a day.
‘Mobius, book me a day off tomorrow. Thanks’.
‘Mobius, I want a new project next week, but not flight dynamics, something to do with computer simulation.’
‘Mobuis, find me a girl, an astrophysicist, 25-35, for uncomplicated sex on weekends. Blonde, petite, local to New Kinshasa, north side.’
And Mobius had made the difference, by taking the internet to a new level, and giving it AI. Mobius had organised the smooth use of people and ideas, and a team of a hundred scientists simply worked on making Mobius itself more efficient. And that’s where Shelly had come in. She had seen the problem early on, and gotten involved, travelling around to the various interested parties and smiling nicely.
Mobius had started as a team of recruitment consultants using a bit of software, and had grown, its budget increased. First, it organised the work flow, then the workers, then the projects. Everyone had a task that suited them, lived in a suitable place, and were made to feel that they were making a difference. Shelly spent a great deal of time meeting people, enquiring after projects, and thanking people. She had become President Faster and Cheaper, as I had operated around New Kinshasa.
In the later years she had been involved with the game, since long distance space flight was now a possibility. The Seethan young taken across to that world had been raised by humans, educated well from the start, and had proven to be very smart. At thirteen years old they were being frozen for weeks on end and brought back, and many had flown in Dark Star. A hard core of thirty Seethan pilots became an elite unit, and flew fast jets, orbital craft, and simulated deep space missions.
Towa
rds the end, several had been frozen for nine months, revived without a problem. And those freezings had occurred in a gell, similar to that found aboard Slumber’s ship, a mock-up of Dark Star used. The pilots had each clambered into the mock-up, and had been locked in. After flying the simulated ships out of the Earth’s orbit and around the Sun, picking up speed, they headed out towards Saturn to perform a fast sling shot, to be revived in Earth’s orbit, and to land the ship. Now, they were certain that they could do it for real.
The blood product was also helping, in that the Seethan pilots would be given low dosages of harmful radiation during the simulations, and all recovered well enough. We seemed to have it all sewn up, all the angles covered.
On Jimmy’s old world, twenty two years had elapsed, and much had changed thanks to new technology, as well as the normal ongoing development of the various integrated economies. South America was doing well, advanced solar power utilised in most homes, and Africa had witnessed a population explosion. The mining areas around the Congo had been improved and expanded, as had agriculture and education.
But the greatest differences could be seen in Britain and Europe, since many of the volunteers - non scientists - had helped out up there. Houses had been rebuilt, roads repaired, bridges repaired. Agriculture in Europe was thriving, as was the economy, trade now possible with many other nations.
The various populations of the world had started to rebuild, and something of a baby-boom had been witnessed. China had finally found its feet after the war, a war in which it had lost its major cities, and its capital. That capital, and its communist leaders, had previously controlled China with an iron grip. When the head had been cut off the system had collapsed, and local town councils took over, or lawless gangs and warlords.
It had taken the Chinese two decades to reassert communist control, although they were encouraged to be socialist rather than communist. A unified China had grown quickly with outside help, and was now on its way to being a super-power again, but would lag behind Africa and South America for decades.
