24 – Pushing the boundaries Alissa Parces – January 15th 2051 – Piercer of Darkness, The Belt

The Piercer of Darkness was silently hovering stationary above an asteroid, the very same one where the Desolation found the strange metallic object a couple weeks back. It was almost round, with a few bumps here and there and darker spots all over its surface. It was, all things considered, rather unassuming. A generic lump of gravel kept together by its own very weak gravitational field. And yet, there was a secret hidden deep under the surface. A story, of love and loss, from the deep past.

The mood around the ship was not one of discovery and adventure, however. Not the festive atmosphere that came with the thrill of a message in a bottle from the past. The news of the Interloper mission had reached even here, on this ship at the edge of the inner solar system, despite the longer timescales that came with the distance. The morale of the crew was at an all-time low, with most of them being scientists not used to being this far away from home. It made the darkness of space look like it was hiding unspeakable horrors beneath, the danger of the deep oceans of the void just a thin veil of steel away from their daily lives in space.

The fear of the alien horrors still plagued the minds of anyone brave enough to ask Eve for the footage.

A man was lazily floating, enjoying his break from work. While some of the crew was decrypting the alien runes on the surface of the object down below, he had to make sure that they were not damaging it. Easier said than done, the metal was something nobody had ever seen before. It was so hard it seemed unbreakable, but who knew what millennia of cosmic radiation could do to it? Maybe it would crumble like dust, maybe it would still be as indestructible as it seemed. “Man, you have no idea what I would pay for the tesseract to be a reality right now.”

“Go get a degree in theoretical physics and make it a reality, then.” The captain, Parces, was a short woman in her mid-thirties. She floated beside the man, naked and covered in a slight sheen of sweat. She smirked naughtily in his direction, enjoying her tease as it struck home.

“I have a PhD in physics, you know? And that makes it all the more depressing. Even if we actually managed to collapse space into a 4-dimensional controlled manifold, the connection would only stay open for as long as we can input energy into it. A lot of energy. We’d need huge capacitor banks and-”

“Shut up.” She said, planting a kiss on his lips. In truth, she was aroused again. That man, damn him, managed to push all her right buttons even without knowing what he was doing.

Marie Khoroff – Biolab 4, Heaven Hub orbital station

“A slime mold, perhaps?” Dr. Khoroff wondered, voicing her own thoughts to Eve.

“Maybe.” Replied the AI, effectively ending the conversation. It was always this way with the Doctor: she would begin spewing random ideas and Eve would have to keep her grounded.

The idea of a slime mold was interesting, though. It fit several criteria perfectly, in her opinion, and it for the first time today that Eve did not immediately shut down her idea. Maybe she was onto something, she mused. It would be nice to finally make a breakthrough, build a name for herself.

The process of innovation and discovery was such a wonderful and mysterious thing to her. She often wondered why Eve never helped her much, especially after learning about how her colleagues worked in tandem with the AI. First off, even before mentioning Eve, they worked in teams while she always worked alone. Granted, she had everything she wanted at her disposal and with the robotic helpers she didn’t need anyone else around. Yet, it was as if the others did not want to work with her.

And Eve agreed that she should do her research alone in her lab. What a strange thing. Then there was this thing about the AI helping out the other researchers by suggesting them ideas and running simulations. Eve had never done that for her, though. In fact, she had never even once suggested anything or even talked to encourage Dr. Khoroff to keep researching. The only thing she did was providing the woman with everything she could ever need for her experiments, and more.

There was a boot inside a thick glass box floating in the middle of the room. It was being kept in place by wires coming from the floor and the ceiling, and the glass was currently exposed to a light electric field so that the crystals would reorient themselves in order not to let too much light through. Even through the darkened glass, however, thick pulsing red veins were visible. She hoped her specimen could thrive in darkness, at least. Otherwhile it would mean it was the atmosphere that was the issue, and she would have to try and see if she could recreate the right conditions for it to grow once more.

The story of how such a boot happened to be in her lab was very unique. Even for her standards, although she had no idea that she was so different than most other people. She had her suspects, but nothing like concrete evidence. But maybe that was due to her condition, the very same condition that made her so distracted in her life. Like now, for instance, as she could barely recall what her last train of thought even was about.

Eve had this tendency to make everyone’s life unique and different, her approach the exact opposite than what society used to do in the pre-Machine period. Instead of fitting people into preset shapes and stereotypes, she made their world unique and tailored for their needs.

Some noticed this, but to most it appeared so natural, so smooth it was impossible to notice. And that was the point. Even the old generation, people who used to live in the pre-Machine era soon found it difficult to imagine living in a society different from this one they lived in. Such was the power of adaptation, especially when the new environment they had to adapt to was the most hospitable they could ever wish for.

Which brought her mind back, via some neural pathways unknown to her, to how the boot happened to be inside its dark stained-glass box in the middle of a lab in space. In short: she had no idea.

One evening, three days ago, she walked back into her lab after dinner to look for a pair of glasses she had forgotten and found it there. It was common occurrence for her to forget pieces of clothing in her lab, although she soon learned she was the only one, (or one among very few, her mind seemed to suggest for some reason she could not recall,) who had such an issue. The other people, she learned, were promptly notified by Eve whenever they left an article of clothing or some other item back in their lab. The reason why she had never been once notified, she had no idea. But it was no issue, in fact she rather liked walking (right now it was more like floating, though) along the mostly empty corridors this late at night.

Looking out of the windows she could see the half-finished sections of the soon-to-be ring, the thick metal beams and the skeleton of what will soon be another wing altogether. The entertainment wing on the right, and the experimental agricultural one on the left. Although the word wing might be the wrong term for that, as they were actually quarters of a circle. She was in the research wing right now, while the last ring was where the administrative offices were already located. The ring was half finished already, she noticed with excitement. Which led her to wondering where exactly the residential district was even located, a thing she thoroughly ignored considering she always took the inner elevator to get back to her place.

Maybe they were all along the ring, just along another circular corridor parallel to this one? It could be, she’d have to check. Eve refused to give her the data for some reason, so she was stuck figuring it out by herself. She could recall the AI saying it was bad for her memory if she always told her things whenever she asked for them, but Dr. Khoroff found it hard to believe it. Had she not graduated in biology and biotechnologies with flying grades in less than half the normal time? Her memory worked perfectly, even better than average in fact, to her estimation.

Eve was either pulling a prank on her, or grooming her mind towards something for some reason. Maybe nudging her in some direction so that she could have a breakthrough in her research?

She had lost herself in thought once again. Where was she now? Ah, right, the reason why she liked walking along the corridors. It was simple, really. Inspiration.

She always had those moments, when she was lost in her thoughts. And suddenly her head became clear, like a fog lifted from her mind. And ideas would come to her. They would flow freely, create connections, bloom like little beautiful flowers. They used to wither too, she had no memory of this happening, but they indeed used to disappear just as quickly as they came.

Until one day, when she finally got her own first lab back on Earth, things began to appear. Overnight, or even while she was on bathroom breaks. Things would just be there, on the table or on the ground, as if waiting for her. And thoughts and connections that previously had been lost to the hazy fog of her mind resurfaced in full bloom, and made her do things with such items. Invent stuff, build and innovate.

And so, flowing like the wind from one place to another, from one project to another, she found herself here in space. Living her personal dream, even thought she had no idea when she had even dreamt of it. But now that she was here, she was so sure: it seemed impossible she didn’t remember before.

There was a conversation she remembered having, although its contents were a bit hazy at the moment. She was speaking with Eve about the things that kept appearing here, and it was on that day that she learned that her mind was somehow special. The next day the memory was already hazy, just as it was right now, but one thing stuck. A promise.

That she would be fixed, soon. And all would be so much better.

Alissa Parces – Piercer of Darkness, The Belt

A small spacecraft containing a little secure package had left the Heaven Hub a few days ago, directed towards the belt. It was an inconspicuous little thing, a simple fusion powered missile without any crew filled to the brim with supplies sent to restock the Piercer.

She frowned, looking at the holographic image hovering in front of her as she sat on her captain’s chair. This was the third supply rocket today, bringing in all the scientific equipment needed to analyze the seemingly irrelevant alien artefact a few kilometers under her feet. There was already a sprawling camp on the surface of the asteroid, prefab buildings appearing here and there and quickly dotting the grey gravelly surface. Their reflective metal roofs sparkled under the faint sunlight, reminding her for some reason of the nights spent camping in the outback.

It was an odd sight, as if day and night were one and the same out here. There was no blue sky, only an endless sea of black with no visible stars. The sun shone too bright, illuminating the night like an impossibly bright moon. Drowning the faint presence of the little twinkles in the night, making space all the more lonely to her.

She chuckled at herself, realizing she had gone poetic without a real reason. There was no cause for her complaints, since she wasn’t actually looking out of a real window. She was not staring into space, not really at least. What she was doing instead, was having an incredibly accurate reconstruction of the view from here beamed directly into her retinas. Space as if the Piercer was made of ether, invisible and intangible. There was no need to curse at the sun for being to bright, then. All she had to do was ask the LAI to adjust the brightness and relevant star magnitudes.

Immediately the cosmos was brought to life before her very eyes. Brilliances unseen, beacons of light though the darkness shone with the promise of tales yet untold. Discoveries hiding close to those burning masses of plasma.

“The rocket has arrived.” The monotone voice of the LAI shook her out of her stupor. She was the captain, after all, and she had duties to fulfill. Maybe she would stargaze again tonight, after her little workout session of course.

She unstrapped herself from her chair, a necessary precaution whenever she decided to stargaze lest she bump into people and floating items. She took a right, then a left, following the corridors with practiced motions. Navigating the ship like it was hers. Finally, she arrived at the hangar bay. The rocket was too big to fit inside a puny fifty meters metal ball, so it had detached its engine section and had docked. The airlock was open already, the pressure having equalized before she was allowed into the room by the ship’s LAI.

She could see the cylindrical storage area of the rocket through the small round hole that connected the two volumes of breathable air. There was a little unassuming package, she had been told, something that made the whole hangar bay restricted to her eyes only. Secrecy was not a common thing in the Empire, with all of the information given freely to whoever desired it through Eve. There was no guarantee that the information was either correct or the whole truth, of course, but extensive tests had been done by the most untrusting. Eve had always been completely honest with everyone, the sole exception being whenever a situation required a bit of finesse from her part. Always for the betterment of people and of the human race, and even when it turned out bad it was always done with the best intentions in mind.

She liked to believe that, and this position of power actually confirmed it. She was only a captain, of course, and of a science ship to boot but the expected influx of new information that she expected to come with her new level of clearance never came.

All this just to say that she was quite anxious regarding the contents of that little classified package.

“Captain on deck.” A man’s voice called as soon as she was back with the package. It was small but incredibly heavy, a cube one-meter tall weighting several hundreds of kilograms. It moved thanks to the little engines spewing jets of compressed air to push it slowly but steadily around. The whole crew was here, the four soldiers and the captain on one side, and the nine scientists on the other. they were eyeing the wrapped cube like it was a Christmas present.

“What is that?” One of them said. It was her ‘secret’ lover, although she was very well aware that the secret was public domain by now.

“A package from Eve. Came directly from the R&D section of the Heaven Hub.” She said. “I’m declassifying the information about it right now.” She moved her hands in the air a bit, and the nine in front of her immediately stilled.

Their eyes were almost glazed over, as they frantically sorted through all the information about the small thing hovering in the air in the middle of the room. Her lover’s reaction amused her the most, as she still recalled their conversation earlier today. This was to him like the dream of a lifetime coming true.

“Holy-”

“It’s real. It’s bloody real!”

“Yes.” Captain Parces said. “And you get to assemble it right on this ship, people.” She wanted to wink, but refrained from doing so. No need for unruly scientists and engineers to see her as unprofessional. The time for teasing would come later tonight, she was sure.

“Here? But where?” Asked a soldier. He wasn’t privy to the design of the ship, or perhaps didn’t notice the empty room next to the reactor.

“There’s a room just for that. Apparently, the technology has been in development for a while, and the Corvette design actually supports the Tesseract module natively.” She said, eliciting another round of blank stares from the scientists as they reviewed the new information.

Two hours later, the cubic package was hovering in the middle of the empty room.

“Those suit servo mechanisms, man. Gotta love them.”

“Aye. My arms are sore already, I don’t wanna know how they’d be if I had to move the bloody cube on my own.”

The first of the two gingerly approached the package. It was time to finally open it and connect it to the ship’s power supply line. The device hurt to even look at. It was an impossible thing, edges and straight lines appearing out of nowhere and suddenly disappearing. Ripples emanating from its center, distorting the very space around it. Lights coming and going. Curved lines never meeting, straight parallel lines intersecting at places. Edges of space offering glimpses of unknown to whoever dared look at them.

Its official acronym was: Trans-dimensional Enhanced System for Superluminal Electromagnetic Ranging And Covert Telecommunications. It was evident that the acronym was though after the name Tesseract was proposed, but it was fitting.

The power couplings were already in place, it was only a matter of placing the device into the slot and arranging the many capacitor banks all around it. The room seemed to expand and contract as if it was breathing, the Tesseract at its center. Immobile but ever changing. It took the two people the better part of the day, but they worked tirelessly. They would never give up the chance of being able to see it from this close to anyone else, even though they knew that it was not going to be a secret for much longer.

“First test: communication request and acceptance protocol.” Said the captain, eyeing the crew once again all present and waiting on the bridge. There were other people not of the crew milling around the ship, coming and going to and from the asteroid’s surface, but they didn’t have clearance to witness the tests.

“Proceed.” She said, and watched as the woman on her right began typing commands. The cube hummed with power as it received a huge amount of energy in the span of a microsecond before once again deactivating. The capacitors quickly filled up as the reactor increased its yield to meet the increased demand.

“Request got through. Test passed.” The woman said.

“Next they should be sending the request from the Hub. Are we ready to supply energy to sustain the connection?” She asked.

“Aye, capacitors are full, reactor is on stand-by.” One of the men said, eyes glued to his display.

“Request came and accepted. Connection was strong, one microsecond, packet loss negligible.” Said the woman at the conn.

“And now the final one. Sustained communication.”

“The capacitors should have juice for an hour before we have to drop the connection.” The captain announced, and then answered the unasked question that was most certainly crossing everyone’s minds. “So you even have time to say hi to your families. There’s no limit to data transfer speed and volume, the only issue is how much time the connection is open for.”

“How long until we can connect again?”

“27 hours until the batteries will be full again.”

“Alright, everyone ready?” She finally asked, and the people in the room nodded. No doubt everyone was already neck deep in their own cyberspace, waiting until an Eve connection announced their return to civilization. The ship’s LAI was silent, preparing for its merge with Eve. It had done delayed-time communications every few hours, but this time Eve would actually take over for the duration of the connection. The LAI itself would come out changed, improved and with new instructions. The very ship would change. The air in the room seemed crystallized, as for the first time in weeks they would hear back from home in real time. “Send connection request, stable link.”