The Orthogonal Galaxy (7 page)

Due to the electric engine
and smooth suspension of the MTV, Garrison didn’t realize that they
had just made their first stop. He was still enraptured with his
new surroundings.

“
Garrison,” Ayman stated
in grandiose fashion. “This is the SAR pad.”

Garrison snapped out of
his amazement and returned to the task at hand. He saw a huge
building about a half-mile long and five stories tall. It was by
far the largest and most dominating of any building in the crater.
However, its design was similar to the other buildings around camp,
so there was nothing particularly aesthetic about it. Four concrete
walls and a flat steel-reinforced concrete ceiling did not give
Garrison anything to write home about. However, this building, he
knew to be one of the most significant and well-used facilities on
the premises. Indeed, the SAR pad was absolutely essential to life
on Mars.

…

Sub-atomic replication was
an earth-shattering invention that occurred just before Garrison
was born. A team of physicists under contract with the U.S.
government worked on a project so secretive that it rivaled the
efforts of the Manhattan Project which brought the world into the
nuclear age way back in the twentieth century. Their efforts landed
themselves a Nobel Prize in physics for their invention.

The concept of sub-atomic
replication is simple enough. Everything that has mass is made up
of atoms. These atoms have sub-atomic building blocks—neutrons,
protons, and electrons. The theory for years had been that if you
could take an atom and reconfigure the number and relationship of
these sub-atomic particles then you could literally turn any atom
into a completely different atom. For this reason, the project was
dubbed the Midas Project, with the thought in mind that if the
project succeeded, then it would literally be possible that
anything could be turned to gold.

Once the physicists were
able to demonstrate the successful reconfiguration of an atom, they
could then turn their alchemistic efforts to the molecular level.
The problem which hampered the scientists for so long was how they
could reconfigure an object of significant complexity. The
usefulness of the solution was very limiting, because they were
only able to demonstrate sub-atomic replication to the most basic
of materials. Such would be of little use to the
government.

A significant breakthrough
occurred when a particular electrochemical reaction was discovered
that facilitated the stripping away of layers of complex objects,
but there were still two problems that remained. First, the massive
amount of computation and data storage that was required to
understand the object’s exact sub-atomic ingredients and
relationships were daunting. Second, because layers were literally
stripped away one at a time, only solid materials could effectively
be replicated. Liquids and gasses would escape their container as
they were stripped away sub-atomically. For example, if the SAR
machine were to strip away the layers of glass, there would be no
glass to hold the water. Thus, before the layers representing the
water could be reached, the contents of the glass became a mere
puddle on the floor, making it impossible to reconstruct its
original state inside the glass.

To solve the first
problem, the team worked long and hard on an algorithm using
photonic computing. Photonic computers utilize a different approach
to calculation than do classic computers. While the latter relies
on bits which can take on one of two binary states—0 or 1—the
former relies on colored photons of light that race around
nano-optic cables. Each photon conveys 32 bits of data that
represents a unique signature of the color and its brightness. The
fact that they travel at the speed of light makes it even faster to
move data around. In order to solve the second problem, the team
used magnetic refrigerators in order to produce temperatures near
absolute zero. At sufficiently cold temperatures, all matter
freezes. Once frozen, it is then possible to strip away the layers
to compose a full chemical map of the object. It turned out that
magnetic refrigeration made the entire process more robust. Because
of the lack of heat, the state of the sub-atomic particles showed
very little variance during the process of decomposition, and as a
result, the map was less likely to be in error when the object was
replicated. This, then, was the silver lining that paid out gold
for the Midas Project.

The project proved to be a
tremendous success, and talk of “teleportation” became a household
standard. Yet, because of the manner in which the problem was
solved, sub-atomic replication only applied to non-living material.
Scientists would have to go back to the drawing board if they ever
wanted to teleport people seamlessly from point A to point B. Once
the myth was dispelled that NASA had no astronauts that could bark
the command, “Beam me up, Scotty,” interest among the lay person
diminished.

But as time went by that
interest was rekindled in the business sector. Entrepreneurs began
to realize the potential of sub-atomic replication. Imagine the
money that could be saved in the transportation industry if
long-haul truck drivers could be replaced with regional SAR pads.
Manufacturers salivated at the thought of producing a map of one
superior product which could be cloned by throwing a bunch of sand
into a machine. At one point, Coca-Cola was known to request
licensing the technology for a one-time fee of $600 billion,
because they recognized how quickly they could recover the price
when they would only need to come up with massive quantities of
very low-price raw materials—dirt, rocks, garbage—that they could
be fed into a SAR generator and thereby crank out bottle after
bottle of refreshing carbonated beverages. When the U.S. government
promptly shut down discussions, Coca-Cola renegotiated based on a
potentially more lucrative royalty-based proposal. It would offer
the U.S. an opportunity to reap the profits directly from the
manufacturer instead of through the tax structure. While such a
proposal had many on Capitol Hill scouring calculations about what
such a proposal might do to release the U.S. of an ever-blossoming
budget deficit, many experts were quick to point out the
socio-economic devastation that might result.

Fears were justified just
months after the second Coca-Cola proposal was nixed. A ring of
NASA scientists were scandalized for unauthorized usage of the SAR
pad. They had crafted a way to bypass certain security mechanisms
such that there was no record of their entry. However, federal
agents investigating a counterfeit money scheme eventually
discovered the operation. After convictions and sentences were
issued to the participants, NASA tightened security at each
earth-based SAR pad to prevent further corruption. In the meantime,
progress on Camp Mars was hampered such that the project completed
two years behind schedule and caused great public outcry for its
budget overruns.

Now recognizing the
potential problems that such a technology would cast onto a fragile
international economy, the U.S. government thought it wise to treat
sub-atomic replication as secret as nuclear technology. Further,
the number of sub-atomic facilities had been limited to just five.
These were located at Edwards Air Force Base in California, Kennedy
Space Center in Florida, Johnson Space Center in Texas, Camp Moon,
and Camp Mars. Each was equipped to decompose or replicate any
object from encrypted data which was transmitted to its receiver
from any other site via satellite.

It is impossible to argue
against the fact that SAR technology was absolutely required for
sustained life on Mars. Through the technology, astronauts obtain
everything from chisels to cheese-steak sandwiches to the very
chemicals and supplies needed to run the SAR pad. From a constant
supply of mass acquired through waste materials, astronauts are
able to restock everything they need to sustain life.

The only additional
requirement to make life on Camp Mars possible is the constant
demand on energy to make all of the chemical transitions.
Fortunately, the sun is a constant source of energy on Mars, for
which the astronauts can tap into without any atmospheric
obstructions making solar energy a very reliable source of
power.

…

As the crew staggered
towards the massive building in the awkward gravity of Mars, Dmitri
was the first to reach the steel door. He released the latch
mechanism and slowly swung the door open with some effort. Garrison
peered into utter darkness while Ayman crossed the threshold and
flipped a large circuit breaker. The room flooded with a bright
light that caused Garrison to squint at first. He walked inside to
see a cavernous concrete box. Very little adorned this wide-open
building, but upon close scrutiny, Garrison did notice that the
back wall was lined with tall chemical canisters and pipes running
out of them in a chaotic looking manner. They ran this way and that
up the wall and into the ceiling. There were tiny darkened windows
about twelve inches square all the way around the interior about
half way up each wall. There was a room in one corner of the
building that had a large window about 15 feet off of the floor.
Through the window, Garrison could see a series of control panels
with yellow and green lights sparsely spread across each panel.
Garrison’s attention was then drawn to the center of the room. He
peered intensely and noticed that there was a tiny object adorning
the floor of the room a couple of hundred yards away.

“
What’s that?” Garrison
asked, gesturing to the object?

“
Ah,” exclaimed Ayman.
“That would be my new headset. I’ll just go pick it up and meet you
two in the control room.”

Ayman then hopped onto an
electric scooter and proceeded to drive to the headset a couple of
hundred yards away. Dmitri led Garrison to the control room, first
entering the decompression chamber. With the door to the SAR pad
sealed, Garrison heard the now familiar sound of air filling the
chamber. The two proceeded through another door and proceeded up a
stairwell into the control room. After removing their helmets,
Garrison looked out of the window to see Ayman driving the scooter
back in the direction of the control room. Within a minute he had
joined them.

“
NASA has asked us to send
them the faulty headset so that they can assess the problem,” Ayman
informed Garrison as he swapped the faulty set out of his helmet
for the good one.

Ayman returned to the
center of the room on the scooter and set the faulty set down.
After returning, he handed Garrison a pair of dark goggles.
Noticing that Dmitri had already put a pair of goggles on himself,
he followed the lead of his colleagues.

“
I show you the SAR
controls,” Dmitri gestured at the main control panel. “First, we
decompose the headset. Because it is such small object, this will
only take few seconds.”

The first button that
Dmitri pushed extinguished the lights from the main room. Then, he
dimmed the white lights from the control room, leaving a faint glow
of red lighting that shined directly onto the control
panel.

“
Now, we replenish
environment with correct chemical vapor level,” Dmitri depressed
another button, which initiated a whistling sound that persisted
for a couple of minutes.

“
Environment sensors in
room inform computer how to correct vapor levels. Once correct
levels are reached, this light here will turn on.”

When the team of
astronauts saw the square green light with the words “Environment
Stable” on it, decomposition could begin. Dmitri slowly turning a
knob clockwise, and while doing so, Garrison could see a green glow
develop in the main room. He could see a slight haze from the
chemicals which had recently been injected as well. In a flash, he
saw a steady stream of lasers scanning the room from the windows
along the walls. Green, red, and white lasers splashed throughout
the room for about six seconds, and then a sudden darkness and
quiet enveloped the whole of the SAR pad.

Pushing one last button,
the lights were turned on in full and the three astronauts removed
their goggles. Garrison looked out into the room and noticed that
the headset which sat on the floor was now gone. Decomposed into a
fine dust which he could not see due to the distance, the headset
became nothing more than a stream of 0s and 1s rushing up to one of
the four satellites orbiting Mars. Within fifteen minutes, the data
would arrive on Earth, allowing technicians there to replicate and
study the headset to determine the source of failure and improve
the design in the future.

“
And that’s all there is
to it, Garrison.” Ayman said grabbing O’Ryan on the shoulder. “One
of the most technologically complicated inventions of the
millennium boiled down to the push of a few buttons.

While Ayman and Dmitri
were the first to place their helmets on their heads, Garrison’s
head continued to shake his head in awe of the scene he had just
witnessed.

…

The team of astronauts
left the SAR pad and continued on their tour, first stopping at the
well house on the Southern end of the crater. Before studying the
underground world of Mars, NASA knew that the SAR pad could be used
for delivering water to the astronauts. A 55-gallon barrel of ice
could easily be decomposed and sent once to the camp. That formula
could then be saved into the computer, allowing the astronauts to
create as many barrels as were needed. However, after sufficient
investigation, areologists were quick to conclude that there likely
were large reservoirs of water underneath the surface. After
drilling in several locations on the crater, a reservoir had indeed
been found several thousand feet below the crater floor. While
there was no cycle of precipitation to replenish the reservoir,
experts had calculated that the reservoir that had been tapped into
should last for a few decades of use in the camp.