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The Runaway Starship © 2010 by D.B. Story
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First Edition – February, 2010
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The Runaway Starship
By D.B. Story
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A special thanks to Mulligan, VW, and Baba for their excellent and much appreciated proofreading.
Chapter 1—Disconnection
Richard stepped onboard humanity's first interstellar ship, although stepped might have been a misnomer. Without the drive running and engaged, the ship was in freefall around Earth and you didn't really step on anything. He took a moment to look around despite the sight being very familiar to him by now, and took a deep breath of that wonderful new ship smell. The excitement of being privileged enough to be standing on the deck of a ship that was going to fly to the stars never grew old.
That new ship smell came from the special paint and natural fibers used in its furnishings. Experiments going back to the original Biosphere 2 project had shown how little of modern fabrics, paints, solvents, and other common manufacturing elements you could afford to have in a fully sealed environment.
Interstellar contact had happened barely over a half-decade ago and the whole idea of a galaxy full of life, much of it seemingly a lot like ourselves, still left most folks rather giddy.
Contact hadn't been intentional. Earth was hardly ready by galactic standards for polite society, and might not have been for hundreds of years—if ever. But a ship passing by had suffered a catastrophic failure at the most inopportune—or opportune, depending on your point of view—moment and limped into Earth's solar system. It had traded information for repairs and now Earth was building their own first ship to go out there and see what this was all about.
That first visiting ship hadn't been the only one. Once the ice had been broken several more ships had stopped by. In fact, the latest visitor had just departed the previous day.
Earth, however, had yet to become a major destination because frankly, except for raw materials, which had quickly been protected from immediate exploitation by worldwide legislative action, Earth was dirt poor by galactic standards. It might become a tourist destination as a primitive, unspoiled—again by galactic standards—world, and native art always finds a market through its uniqueness and cachet, but there was little beyond that so far. If Earth wanted to join in with the rest of galactic society and trade with them it were going to have to manage it on its own, at least initially.
It wasn't altogether strange that so much had been going on in the galaxy that Earth had missed up until now. The Drake Equation had stated that the probability for intelligent civilizations in the galaxy should have allowed for several, while the Fermi Paradox had argued against that by pointing out if they are there why hadn't we detected them yet? The Anthropic Principle argued conversely that our universe seemed especially fine-tuned to allow life to flourish. Turns out that just one little thing was missed by about everyone except the science fiction writers.
Much of physics makes the assumption that what happens where you're standing happens the same way everywhere else as well. Hydrogen and oxygen burn to produce heat and water. Except for relativistic adjustments due to the effects of very high speeds, this is believed true here, true down the block, true on the other side of the world, true on Mars, true on Alpha Centauri, and true five galaxies over. However, one thing just wasn't taken properly into account.
Being deep in the Solar System's gravity well Earth science had no ability to detect superluminal travelers passing by even as close as the Oort Cloud. And while they'd long listened for signals of intelligent life, it turns out that they'd been listing on the wrong bands.
Combine that with how strongly Earth was wedded to their quaint four-dimensional—three spatial plus time—worldview it was simply hard to visualize the rest of the eleven dimensions where all of the real action was going on.
But that was about to change now.
* * * *
"Hello Commander Richard," the soft feminine voice spoke out of the nearest speaker as he finished his reverie and set off down the passageway from the entry hatch. While it was a woman's voice because studies had shown that all humans pay more attention to that voice in times of emergency than any other, the personality behind it seemed to match the voice very well.
"Hello C.H.A.R.L.E.N.E.," Richard replied casually back to the ship's computer.
C.H.A.R.L.E.N.E.: Computer Heuristic Artificial Rationalizing Learning Emotive Neural-networked Equivalence. Who needed that mouthful every time they just had a simple question?
Lately She—weren't all ships Shes—had started addressing him as "Commander". Richard wasn't actually the ship's commander, although it might be said that he was Charlene's commander since he was the chief architect and lead programmer of the most advanced computer yet built.
As Earth's mathematicians had studied the drive equations provided by that first visiting ship they'd realized that the only possible solution would require simultaneous equation solutions solved in real-time. This meant that the integration between ship and computer would need to be so tight that the two essentially became one.
As he walked forward to the control room the soft indirect lighting came on ahead of him to light his path and darkened behind him. No wasted energy here.
Richard paid that no mind. He was busy reminding himself that he'd already made a mental note to track down just what had led Charlene into addressing him as Commander. He knew it had to reside down in her learning routines, but it could still require significant time and effort to identify the exact paths through her logic that had come together to form this association.
The visiting ships hadn't given away all their secrets. Knowledge is one of the currencies of galactic trade. In order to solve problems that no one could yet foresee this computer had to be capable of learning new things, an ability of which she'd already shown herself capable.
Her greatest accomplishment to date had been a simplification of her drive equations. While seemingly minor and only amounting to approximately a three percent improvement in her computational efficiency in solving them, this optimization had escaped all the great mathematical minds on Earth and opened up its own new math subdomain for further study. Her solution to them promised a new approach to understanding, and possibly finally solving, the Hodge Conjecture.
"What's your status?" Richard queried as he made his way carefully forward. Despite the time he'd spent in the zero-g sections of the attached space station cum construction base, lack of gravity still left him with the feeling of endlessly falling, and an unpleasant tingling in his upper legs.
There was nothing wrong with that feeling. In fact, it was completely accurate. Any object in free orbit was endlessly falling around the planet below, while moving forward fast enough to avoid hitting it. But space legs were hard to come by for someone who'd never believed he was going to ever make it off Earth. Now he intended to be on the maiden crew to ship out on Earth One. Geek that he was, he wouldn't miss this for the world no matter how much his body might object.
Richard wasn't going to be humanity's first interstellar traveler. Several others had already managed to somehow talk their way onto the other ships that had passed through. One had even returned already with stories to tell. But they all had no control over their destiny. They could only go where the ships would take them. Even so...
Richard didn't need to be the first one out there. He just needed to make the trip himself. He was still a young man, but already Earth wasn't enough for him any longer. Not when there was so much else waiting out there to be seen for the first time.
He adroitly skipped aside as the small maintenance robot trundled the opposite direction down the passageway, seemingly oblivious to his presence. It wouldn't have actually collided with him—Earth One was overflowing with safeguards to protect its fragile human crew. In fact, he was here to install even more restrictions today that some bureaucrat had decided that the ship needed to be fully safe to fly. But rather than force the small 'bot to make a detour around him on its magnetic treads Richard easily vaulted over its many appendages. Even so it paused for a moment before receiving the all-clear to proceed again.
Richard didn't have magnetic treads himself. He joked about his ship slippers and fingerless gloves as being giant Post-It notes, with just enough adhesive to anchor him along the way while not impeding his easy progress.
"All systems nominal, Commander," Charlene reported from the nearest speaker. "No system alerts; no exceptions detected."
While Richard hadn't yet logged into her command terminal, there were a number of commands Charlene could perform simply by voice. And her voice always intrigued him. Low, a bit husky, definitely sexy, he'd like to find the woman they'd found to provide such a very appealing enunciation in the first place. In Richard's mental image such a woman would be very much worth meeting.
"Details," Richard commanded, seeking to make the best use of his time onboard. There were still bugs in the environmental systems that limited how many people could be aboard at any given time and how long they could remain. At the moment he was the only one onboard at this late hour for precisely that reason.
Unless I want to work in a space suit, he thought sourly to himself.
Richard wasn't into extreme gonzo programming and had passed on the suit option. With ever tighter deadlines otherwise, which explained why he'd not had time to track down that commander remark yet, he had to make the best use of every second available to him.
Charlene knew that her chief programmer was inquiring both as to the ship's status, as well as to her own.
"My environmental system calibrations are complete," she purred in a way Richard especially enjoyed. It was a tone she saved for good news. She knew how much Richard enjoyed her speaking like this since she was equipped to monitor the health of her crew as well as her systems and only used it with him. For Richard that facet of her personality became another question to be answered when he was next poking through her systems. He wanted the answer to that before she embarrassed him with it in front of the brass.
"The results of those recalibrations won't be known until they've had time to fully settle in," Charlene continued. "All other hit-list items were completed by the end of the last shift and no new ones have been added yet."
There was a perceptible pause before she continued with her report.
"I am unable to personally validate the repairs myself because the stinger switch disconnects remain open keeping me disengaged from the necessary control circuits. However, the monitoring sensors I can access indicate no faults."
Richard frowned for a moment. Another affectation Charlene had picked up of late was speaking of herself as "I" and "me". It could prove embarrassing if he had to explain that behavior to others. He mentally bumped up the priority of probing her logic to see just what she'd been learning of late.
For now he waited. Her report wasn't complete yet. Tracking him through her innards she continued speaking out of the next closest speaker along the way.
"All software updates have been verified and are now fully integrated and operational. No internal faults or exceptions detected."
"Good," Richard said more to himself than to his computer. Although he couldn't remember why the computer would be performing its own validation checks—that was his job before he loaded new software into it—the rest was what he'd expected to hear.
Even though he knew logically that the ship's computer was just an "It", it had become easier over time to just talk to her like another person. In fact, that's exactly what he'd been doing during their most recent sessions while she'd been chewing through ever longer and more complex software updates he'd kept having to install in an effort to keep everyone happy. But he only did this when he'd been sure he was alone on the ship. He didn't want anyone getting the wrong ideas about him and suddenly find himself off the mission now that it was so close to launching. Richard had learned to be careful about keeping his ideas to himself of how humans and their rapidly evolving computers should relate to each other.
"Good?" Charlene questioned, evidently having overheard his mutterings.
"Good that you've finished those updates," he confirmed back to her unnecessarily, but politely. "We've got an even bigger batch of them to go through today."
"Sounds hard," she replied sympathetically, although she was the one who was going to have to do all the heavy lifting on this task.
"A busy night for both of us," Richard confirmed, thinking how meaningless that term has to be. It implied that there were "normal" working hours that he was now working alone here afterwards—as if a space station with a ninety-minute orbit actually had any semblance of actual day and night.
Although Earth One should be able to use its drive to safely land and takeoff from the planet's surface, that was far too chancy for a first endeavor. One minor glitch deep in Earth's gravity and the ship would be a wreck. The less gravity the better as far as the drive itself was concerned, meaning that it was much safer to construct the ship off planet until everything was well worked out.
"Am I complete now?" Charlene suddenly asked.
"Where'd you get that idea from?" Richard demanded.
"That's what some of the other workers were saying today," came the soft reply. "They were talking about being done and finally able to go back downside now."
I'll have to teach her not to believe everything she overhears, or else I'll be forever cleaning bad data out of her systems.
"Shall I resume your preferred music program from its previous point?" the female voice inquired.
"Yes, that would be nice, Charlene."
The soft sounds of instrumental classic rock wafted from the speakers and filled the ship.
Richard recalled how Charlene had come up with this playlist on her own from the ship's library after they'd discussed his own musical tastes. It was just one more example of how her computer brain could provide a solution from minimal initial data—a necessary ability in order to pilot a ship through the higher dimensions.
Richard dodged another maintenance robot, this one with the tip of its arc welder still red hot. Abstractly Richard wondered why they were still active if all maintenance items had been completed. Apparently there were still a few modifications being completed at this late hour. He could check Charlene's logs once he got to the terminal since she now controlled their activities as part of her self-maintenance and repair systems. That way he didn't have to interrupt the calming musical program.
Arriving in the control room Richard made an awkward zero-g flop into the command chair. The belt on his coveralls contained metal squares that would now gently hold him in place in the chair's magnetic field. In an emergency that field could strengthen to keep him from being thrown about. He swung the programming keyboard across his lap which activated the main front screen as his display.
This is why Richard preferred to work in the relatively spacious circular control room, rather than the cramped computer room. Here he had open space, the most comfortable chair, the best sound system with the multiple speakers available, and the largest, best high-resolution display on the ship. His music selection swelled up behind him as he prepared to set to work.
"Time to get cracking," he announced as he banged in his suitably geeky password.
Although Richard carried a small fob that identified him to the ship and opened most doors merely by approaching them, access to the ship's computer at the level he operated required additional safeguards.
Despite entering it many times before, it was rejected now. So was his second attempt. Only when he carefully punched it in key-by-key was he rewarded by the display screen reading: Level 6 Access Granted.
That was better. Richard was the only authorized super-user upside and he relished logging in at the highest level even when it wasn't strictly necessary for the task at hand. This level gave him unprecedented access into every nook and cranny of Charlene's computer mind.
Opening the Velcro'd pocket on his coveralls, Richard removed the first memory stick. Despite its capacity, this update of Charlene's mind was going to require two of them to complete. It seemed to Richard that no matter how quickly memory devices grew in capacity the ability to fill them to overflowing grew even more quickly. Even Charlene's own computer mind was due to receive a doubling of ram and tripling of mass storage next week. That new memory upgrade was considered crucial before they left orbit considering how every detail of her voyage was to be recorded, and how much more they kept giving her to handle. Although she'd been maxed out already with no expense spared when installed, in just the few months since then progress had marched onwards.
People just aren't aware of how much digital data they generate every day just going around on their daily routine, he thought wryly.
Inserting the memory device into the slot on the chair arm he waited for it to be recognized and start loading. When it didn't automatically start Richard ejected it and inserted it a second time.
This time it started, however, the progress bar on the screen was painfully slow as it inched across the screen.
We may have built this ship all metric, but it will take a long time for the English system vernacular to become expunged from our thinking.
Watching its slow progression led Richard to mentally grumble. It's going to take more than all night at this rate.
As the slow progress continued Richard tapped on the keyboard to bring up a list of all running processes. Was something tying up his computer's resources?
He couldn't see anything apparent in the process list. With nothing obviously the problem there he next checked the I/O channels for thrashing or mass storage fragmentation, but all was normal. Ditto for the fiber LAN connecting this terminal to the computer itself—no errors and retrys.
Could it be one of the other processors?
C.H.A.R.L.E.N.E. actually consisted of five tightly-coupled, yet fully independent, processing clusters on a ring bus. As such, she was redundant at the macro level as well as self-checking and self-repairing at the cluster and even chip level. Detected faults were automatically routed around with full fail-over to the next cluster if there was any question as to the integrity of the current one. For unforeseen difficult issues she was capable of being split into two separate minds, each of which was macro redundant, while still keeping a hot spare supervisory unit available to arbitrate any disagreements between the paired minds. She could even run as five independent systems.
Suddenly for no apparent reason the load aborted and the memory stick ejected.
Could the update be corrupt?
Normally that wouldn't have been a problem. Richard typically carried a backup copy of his updates on his second memory stick to guard against a random radiation hit beyond its error correcting abilities here outside the protection of Earth's shielding atmosphere. But today the second stick held the rest of the update. If the first stick was corrupt he'd have to abort the whole update process tonight and lose the day's work as he rebuilt them.
Cross fingers, try again, and pray.
Richard reinserted the memory stick. It was accepted and the progress bar started once more from the beginning. Again it was a slow creep across the screen.
What's going on here? It has never loaded this slowly before.
Richard frowned. While he didn't expect Charlene to pick up on the expression despite the monitoring cameras she controlled throughout the ship, he didn't care if she did. The frustration at this balky loading process was causing Richard to lose his calm.
He'd hoped to have a relaxing, problem free shift. His prized Alvarez acoustic guitar—the Stradivarius of unplugged music in his opinion—was stored in the computer room down the far side passageway. He kept it onboard to enjoy the long intervals during compiles and rebuilds, and lately had strummed it while singing softly with Charlene accompanying him on the music selections using one of her spare processors to wile away the hours. He'd never felt closer to his code than during those times.
Richard had acquired the Alvarez after one of his music buddies had gone through the bad experience of having his Martin refused warranty service despite its alleged lifetime warranty. That buddy had been told that because he hadn't stored it in a humidor while living in a dry southwestern state that he was SOL over any warranty repairs. Richard had picked up the Alvarez the next week and never looked back.
He kept it carefully cased in the computer room because that was the one room he controlled completely. He could set the climate as he desired as being perfect for his cherished possession and nobody could gainsay him there. But now that things weren't going that well up here he wasn't in the necessary state of mind to be able to enjoy his music anyway.
Richard tapped the keyboard bringing up his own special diagnostic program. Unlike the normal processor status program, which only queried the processor he was logged into at the moment, this one was far more invasive. It probed all five processor clusters with non-maskable interrupts at the most basic level, directly accessing system pathways and registers.
It too was very slow coming up, almost as if it was fighting to run. Richard drummed his fingers impatiently, not at all soothed by the soft lighting and peaceful music any longer.
What made this doubly frustrating was that Richard had been trying to set aside time to search for something in Charlene's mind that he wasn't ready to even admit the possibility of to himself yet, let alone others. Something far beyond why she'd started addressing him as "Commander."
Something that would make all the difference if I could find it and prove it.
And now all this extra work programming what he considered were merely redundant protections and trying to get them installed and tested was intruding into what he felt would far more useful discoveries that would make all this triple-checking unnecessary. Who felt the need to have yet more manual computer overrides installed in the first place? Surely no one actually planning to be taking a trip on this ship. Just more make-work that pushed off his ability to pursue subjects he felt were far more important.
At long last, just as his probing status window finally opened and started to scroll results, Richard sat up sharply.
* * * *
It wasn't a sound you could hear. There was an argument as to if it was even a sound at all. Going beyond all normal senses there was an inaudible keening in his inner ear that was both too soft to notice—and too intrusive not to.
While most people said they couldn't detect anything at all, Richard wasn't most people. That sound that most people couldn't perceive spoke volumes to Richard.
"Charlene! What just happened?"
"Checking..."
Pause.
Richard didn't need to wait for her answer. His own senses told him that the interstellar drive in the exact center of the ship had suddenly spun up, although certainly no test was scheduled.
"The main drive has come on to standby," the soft voice spoke in unnecessary confirmation.
The drive on Earth One was so perfectly balanced that it emitted no normal sound or vibration. Either would be wasted energy and there was no waste here. Only a sense that couldn't be identified screaming out now that suddenly things were different. Different enough that this ship was now only one step away from being ready to travel to the stars.
"Why?" Richard demanded insistently as his fingers drummed the keyboard to access the ship's overall status. "No tests are scheduled."
"Checking..."
Distracted momentarily, Richard returned his attention to the main screen. The results of his system probe were so unexpected that he waved his hands over the keyboard to scroll the window backwards. The touchless motion-sensitive interface was one thing he loved about this system. He'd never been able to afford one like it for his own home system.