Image – ID 340509565 © Gijsvdabeele | Dreamstime.com
If an accident triggers a phase transition of the vacuum through high-energy physics, it could result in a sixth category risk. However, if civilization has a large spatial extent at that stage, the destruction would take relatively long to complete, making this scenario a whimper rather than a bang.
We should not blame civilization or technology for imposing big existential risks. Because of the way we have defined existential risks, a failure to develop technological civilization would imply that we had fallen victims of an existential disaster (namely a crunch, “technological arrest”). Without technology, our chances of avoiding existential risks would therefore be nil. With technology, we have some chance, although the greatest risks now turn out to be those generated by technology itself.
- Nick Bostrom
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
T.S. Eliot – The Hollow Men
CHAPTER 1
Awannti was running as fast as he could through the Tiagi Biome, a boreal forest where spruce and northern pine grew thick. Awannti was constantly having to dodge tree trunks in his path. But he wasn't slowing down. He knew the Beleni, The Shining Ones, would not be far behind. Although it had been a spur of the moment decision Awannti had prepared by uploading as many augmentations as he could before he started. He hadn't been too picky either, not knowing which aug might be helpful where he was going. He had also grabbed his survival pouch before he took off.
As he ran Awannti couldn't help but think how he had gotten into this situation. At first, he thought he was a perfect fit at the new campus. Everyone was friendly and interesting. They had come from all over the Earth to contribute to the common cause. That cause was to support the Beleni's goals and in return they were to be allowed to build a new world for themselves.
The Earth had been a dead-end for Awannti's ancestors. They had tried but that world run by artificial intelligence was a world where everyone had a fixed place and no one could change their place in society without the approval of the AIs. So Awannti's ancestors had fled to Belenos.
Born into the Beleni world, it had at first been exactly what Awannti wanted. Hard work was rewarded; creativity was encouraged. As he got older, he quickly made a name for himself, but it wasn't long until he noticed a problem. His world, the world he had hoped to build for himself, and the world the Beleni had promised him, was slow in taking shape. The Beleni were not as generous as he had thought. The more he worked the less time he had for himself and his personal goals. And no matter how much he worked it never seemed to be enough to get him nearer those goals. He started feeling trapped.
That was when he fled the campus and found himself running through the forest. Now all he could do was run. If The Shining Ones found him, they would take him back and make it impossible for him to escape again, he had seen it done to others. He wanted anything other than to be captured.
All of a sudden as he was dodging another tree his feet slid from under him on the loose pine needles. He fell headfirst down the hill skidding on the needle carpeted ground. Fortunately, the depth of the pine needles that made them so slippery on top also made them a cushion. He was not hurt but lay still.
He listened for any sound that was unnatural to the forest, a sound that would signal the Beleni were near. Awannti lay there for several minutes listening and resting. Once he was certain there was no noise, and his hard breathing had subsided, he rose to continue. But now he wouldn't run in a panic but with a purpose. He would need to find water and a source of food if he was to live out here away from the campus.
He walked down the hill until it bottomed. There he turned to follow the hollow as it continued to snake downward. He hoped as he neared the end he would find a stream. After a walk of a mile or so, he heard the distant gurgling of running water. He picked up his pace and found the stream at the place where the hollow emptied into a deeper valley. Awannti ran to the stream and bent down. With a cupped hand, he sipped the water. It was good. As he drank deeper from the stream he noticed his face in the water. He looked different somehow though it was hard to tell through the constantly rippling stream.
He washed his face and never mind his looks, he felt different. He felt free.
So now he had a source of water. He would follow the stream down the valley to where it became deeper and wider, there he hoped to find a source of food, fish.
Towards evening he was working his way through the brush alongside the ever-widening stream when he heard a splash. He gained a perch from which to see the stream and watched. He saw a fish breach the surface. Awannti leapt with excitement. Now he would have food.
He accessed the survival library he had uploaded. Of the dozen or so methods of catching a fish, he chose the cane method because it was the simplest and required the least equipment to implement. He searched the shore for a suitable cane, not too thick and heavy, which would slow down his striking, but thick enough to hold up to the severe use he was preparing to put it through.
The cane selected, Awannti waded into the stream. The dimming light made it harder to see so he enabled his night vision aug. It worked perfectly. he could see the fish not far beyond him and as one came close, he struck. And missed. It was apparent the water bent the light just enough to cause his aim to be off. He adjusted his aug to compensate.
It took another few minutes until he had stunned a fish sufficiently to catch it in his hands. It felt like it weighed at least a couple of pounds. He spent the rest of the failing light hunting for wood and kindling. Choosing an area close to the stream, a sandy area to set up his firewood, he got the fire going before preparing the fish.
He took from the pouch around his waist a fire starter cube. Stacking the firewood with the kindling at the bottom, Awannti pushed the top of the cube and set it in the middle of the wood. Shortly smoke and flames came from the stack. He could retrieve the fire starter cube later after the fire burned out.
Retrieving a second item, a knife, from the pouch, Awannti accessed a food prep aug and began cutting the fish along its length. He soon had one side of the fish separated from the bony skeleton. From this fillet he cut off the skin, he then washed the fillet in the stream and placed it on a rack made from several wooden sticks he had put on top of the firewood. He then cut another fillet from the fish and cleaned it. By this time the fire had died down into a more uniform heat and Awannti allowed the second fillet to cook as he consumed the first. He finished eating the fish and laid down in the grasses near the stream. The first day and he had survived. He had food and water and soon he would have shelter. Awannti slept peacefully.
It was still dark and something had woken him. It was slow to register but he saw the glow coming from upstream. It wasn't a morning sunrise because that would come from over the hill behind him. It wasn't a morning glow anyway; it was something else.
Then Awannti jumped up from his grass bed.
The Shining Ones, he thought.
He was just about to run downstream when something stopped him. One of his augs had fired. He couldn't move. He was paralyzed, facing downstream with the light approaching from behind. He saw his shadow growing and becoming more sharply delineated. He was becoming sick with fear. The area around him had become bright as day, only with a bluish tint instead. He felt a prickle on the back of his neck. He was screaming inside as he vanished in a blink.
The AIs of Belenos had captured the runaway avatar. They would try to recondition him if possible and return him to the meta-verse to live a productive life. But if not possible, he would have to be terminated. The light of the AIs also blinked out as they removed themselves from the simulated world they maintained.
CHAPTER 2
“Astronomers Detect 'Moses' Rod in the Sky” - The New Hope Sentinel, 6.11.2488.
“If It Ain't Natural, What Is It?” - The Centauri Journal, 6.11.2488.
“Who's Up There? Friend or Foe?” - The Centauri Worker's Union, 6.11.2488.
Moses Jackson went by the name Jack. He was an astronomer with the Centauri Institute on a moon circling the Earth-like planet HR 383c in the star system HR 383. The moon went by the unofficial name Stargazer. It was airless and stable, a perfect platform for astronomy. Unlike the biologists on the planet's surface below, Jack had no interest in gazing inward but only outward.
Going over the previous viewing run he was looking at the anomalies flagged by the astronomy AI. The AI usually tagged the anomaly with an identification, and the AI was usually right. Only in very rare cases was the anomaly flagged but not tagged. This was one of those cases.
Jack took one of the digitized pictures and pulled it into the analysis software. The software was supposed to highlight anything considered too out of the ordinary.
Too alien artifactish, thought Jack as he started the analysis.
Almost immediately the software highlighted a section of the image. Jack zoomed in on the area and saw what looked like a streak. A straight red line in space as if applied by a marker.
Well, that's not supposed to be there.
He ran a further analysis of the image, an analysis that should find any scope or camera artifacts. None were flagged.
So, it's really there, he thought with a slight chill.
Next, he marked each end of the streak. The software would estimate the distance of the marked items from the Sun.
One end, which he started thinking of as the near-end was estimated to be approximately forty-seven light-years from the Sun, while the other end was estimated to be one-hundred thirty-eight light-years from the Sun. So the streak was at least ninety light-years long.
Now he would try to locate the nearest stars to those two points. The far end was located near the star 88 Pegasi. The near-end was close to, Jack blinked, WISE 0735. Better known as Trilos after the Aggie War.
Jack knew that the Aggie War had occurred almost a hundred years before. He had studied about it in college. The war was caused by a schism in the AI family known as the Aggies.
Are they back?
Jack thought he should report this to someone, but who?
Emmy Gibbs' great-great-grandfather, Elias Mach, had won two Noble Prizes in Physics, one was for developing the wormhole drive that nowadays was used by almost every space vessel. Emmy was following in his footsteps at Centauri University in the Centauri Two space habitat orbiting the star Centauri A.
Emmy was only eighteen and finishing her senior year of college at the top of her class. She had already applied and been accepted to graduate school in her chosen discipline, Astrophysics.
She was in the school's library viewing the latest journals and articles that her AI assistant had chosen for her. The report of the red line in space, which was now known as Moses' Rod after its discoverer, caught her eye. She remembered hearing about an experiment her grandfather Elias had performed in his lab here in Centauri Two, many years before. She knew he had proved his theory, quite explosively as it turned out, but she needed to look up the article in his wormhole textbook before she could be sure that his experiment was linked to Moses' Rod.
She found the book and began reading. In the introductory pages of Chapter 24 she discovered what she was looking for:
The longer a wormhole is kept open the greater the energy density in the wormhole dimension. This density leads to a tension that develops at what might be called the wall of the wormhole. This is the place where the repulsive gravity of the exotic matter and energy must balance the attractive force of the ordinary matter and energy of the transporting object.
This energy balance is rapidly changing and leads to an immense stress and a variety of vibrational modes at frequencies beginning in the audible. These vibrational modes are similar to the modes found in a black hole between its event horizon and Cauchy horizon.
Some of this vibrational energy, which will be called shadow energy for reasons that will become apparent later, leaks or radiates away as gravitational energy into normal spacetime.
It will be shown that if a spaceship is close enough to “hear” (compact gravitational waves interacting with the hull of the ship causing it to resonate) this shadow energy then the ship will be close enough to have its three-dimensional momentum affected. This is the frame-dragging effect of General Relativity which is also seen around rotating black holes.
We call this location “in the shadow” of the wormhole.
One side-effect of the energy from the wormhole dimension leaking into ordinary space is that standing waves or ripples in spacetime are created close to the wormhole. The energy of these ripples can excite atoms and cause them to begin radiating in the visible spectrum. Beginning as a soft glow, eventually, the light will get bright enough to be seen by the unaided eye, thus making the invisible corridor in the wormhole dimension visible in ordinary spacetime.
That's it, I'll bet we are seeing a wormhole being kept open.
She would have to contact that Moses guy.
Emmy eventually ran into Dr. Jackson at a meeting of the Centauri Science Association. Jackson had wormhole jumped his way back to the Centauri System to deliver a talk about his discovery which he deliberately did not call Moses' Rod. Emmy approached Dr. Jackson after his talk.
“Dr. Jackson I'm Emmy Gibbs a student in Astrophysics at Centauri Two University.”
“Yes Ms. Gibbs?”
“Sir I listened to your talk, and I think I have an idea about the physical phenomena causing Moses' Rod.”
Jackson winced.
“Please Ms. Gibbs I dislike that name.”
“Of course sir, as you wish. But the physical manifestation causing the red line could be something my great-great-grandfather Elias Mach discovered.”
“Elias Mach? You mean the inventor of the wormhole drive? You are related to him?”
“Yes sir, on my mother's side of the family.”
“Well tell me then how does a discovery of the famous Dr. Mach relate to the red line?”
“The red line was predicted by Dr. Mach to be a tell-tale sign of a wormhole that had been maintained over a long amount of time. And he proved it experimentally.”
“I see, but one thing. An over ninety light-year long wormhole? No one has ever made a jump that long.”
“That's true sir but in the Aggie War the break-away faction was able to open a wormhole from the Trilos System, a distance . . .”
“A distance of more than forty light-years,” said Jackson interrupting.
“Exactly. So, in the last one hundred years or so maybe they've figured out a way to increase the distance by two to three times. Sounds reasonable.”
“I'm afraid so. But who do we tell?”
“We should ask my grandfather, he would know.”
Emmy paused, “That is if you want to go.”
“Are you kidding, meet Elias Mach, let's go.”
Since retiring from experimental work Elias and his wife Burgess lived in a house not far from the university rather than their more rural and more famous house where he had performed his wormhole experiments. The house was on a side street and the curvature of the great habitat became noticeable as one walked further “up” the street. It seemed as if one were rising above the town of Mecklinburg, as if climbing a hill, but it took no more effort than walking Main Street which ran perpendicular to the Mach's street and in the direction of the habitat's length.
Dr. Jackson and Emmy had walked from the university. Dr. Jackson had brought a copy of his paper on the red line. At the front door of the house, which had a small porch set only a few feet from the street, Emmy imprinted her thumb on the door pad. Almost immediately the door opened, and they walked into the entry hall.
There they met someone that Dr. Jackson took to be a servant. Actually, it was a family friend, a robot named Dag that used to work with Elias Mach's wife Burgess when she had a detective agency.
“Dag,” said Emmy, how nice to see you, I wasn't expecting to find you here.”
“Yes Miss, I arrived from Earth just yesterday. Elias and Burgess offered to put me up.”
“Oh, let me introduce you to Dr. Moses Jackson.”
“The discoverer of Moses' Rod?” asked Dag.
“Yes, but I prefer not to use that designation.”
“Understood sir.”
“You were on Earth Dag? How is it?” asked Emmy.
“The situation is improving Miss. Some of the original ANI based AIs such as my friend Sigmund have been a great help in getting the large cities, they call tower complexes working efficiently again.”
“I thought Sigmund had been destroyed by the Beleni Dag?”
“I too Miss. But Sigmund had backups available that allowed him to be restored.”
Dag then told them more about Sigmund and about the reconstruction on Earth and how some of the Em-based families (Em stood for emulated brain, a copy of a human brain run in computer hardware) had returned and taken up their old duties of smoothing the rough edges off of what was left of Earth society. The people there were beginning to feel confident again about their future.
“Wonderful news all around Dag,” said Emmy.
Just then Elias walked into the room.
“Hello Emmy, how are you?” he said as he gave her a hug.
“Very well grandfather. Grandfather this is Dr. Moses Jackson.”
“Oh yes. The discoverer of Moses' Rod. Welcome to my home.”
“Thank you sir, and please call me Jack,” said Dr. Jackson, for once not correcting the speaker.
Emmy and Dag looked at each other knowingly. They had seen many people awed by the two-time winner of the Nobel Prize.
“Grandfather, Dr. Jackson has brought his paper with him. We were hoping to discuss it with you. We believe it shows the reemergence of the breakaway faction of AIs responsible for the Aggie War.”
“I see. Well let's go into my office where we can be more comfortable. Dag would you be so kind as to inform Burgess of the arrival of our guests and ask her to bring some drinks.”
“Of course, sir.”
Elias led the way. Once in his office, Elias sat down behind his wooden desk while Emmy and Dr. Jackson chose chairs to one side. Dr. Jackson handed Elias a copy of his paper and Elias began to skim through it. Dag and Burgess came in with the refreshments. Burgess began to talk with Emmy and Dr. Jackson.
“Well, there's one way to find out,” said Elias aloud to no one in particular.
The others stopped talking.
Burgess asked, “What's that dear?”
“The Beleni,” said Elias. “We'll call and ask them.”
The others looked concerned.
“Won't that give us away?” asked Emmy.
“No Emmy dear they already know where we are. But it will put them on notice that we also know where they are.”
To be released July 20 on Amazon & KU for a special price.