The World Game (23 page)

CHAPTER 54

The fragment swarm

Safe behind the moon, the anti-matter coated fragment shell that was once the crust of planet Earth, along with the flailing remains of the Skyhook, itself being consumed, the deadly materials flew on and dispersed as the ball expanded. The front still gathered more material as it encountered space garbage and then the asteroid belt. Much of the destructive material would vanish into the intergalactic regions to do no more harm. Some would encounter other planets of the Solar System and send them the same way as Earth. In a few decades, some would approach the mighty Sun.

The last sparks of Earthly life were on the fragment and behind the moon. The X6 transport had traversed the moon and run into the swarm. The empty ship was now a deflected anti-matter missile also heading for unknown reaches of space. There were now one hundred thirty five human beings left in the Universe, not counting Nickle, the World Game compere and guardian.

Behind the moon, Sheila had captured the tether reel with just a sniff of reaction mass remaining and had activated the haulback on the reel. She and Martin were getting an easy ride back to her shuttle. Now she had to get Evans to rescue the immobile shuttle that was still flying away from the group.

On the fragment, the team was placing the Dinkshif Drives on the ends of the axis of rotation of the fragment. The drives would counter-rotate to provide linear thrust, while the spin provided pseudo-gravity. Carver and Shaw had calculated a flight path that would take them through the fragment swarm front in the window created by the shield of the moon, a cone of ever expanding safety. The longer they waited, the larger the clear disc became.

However they would have to manoeuvre around the anti-matter coated moon and get behind it before they commenced their long journey to Alpha Centauri. They would achieve this by varying the thrust and orientation of the Dinkshif Drives in normal space drive mode. Aboard the transport, class was in session as they worked their way through the theory and technical side of the drives. Four prototypes that had never been tested upon which the fate of humanity was hanging. It was a tall order, but the team was not going to allow failure due to ignorance.

CHAPTER 55

Aboard Carver’s Transport.

The front of the cabin was full. All the cadets and the President’s party were seated, waiting for Fuller to begin. There were thirty five souls aboard.

“My friends,” began Fuller, “I do not have to go over the situation we are in. As far as we can ascertain, there may be some other survivors behind the moon, but we won’t know that for some time. We will proceed as if we are the sole survivors of our planet. Our goal is to do more than survive. It is to continue humanity and find another planet to restore our species.

There are two principal aspects to the success or failure of this goal.

The first is that these drives we are about to use are prototypes and have never been tested. Simply put, the theory is great, but the practicality may not work. We wait and see.

The second aspect is that for survival, we need the broadest genetic distribution. With so few of us, we will need to calculate and keep genetic records as we carry on normally and have children. We must breed and produce the next generation. And the next. We must minimise the risks of inbreeding for the sake of our future generations.

There will be no shortage of material resources for nurturing babies and growing children and our transit time to Alpha Centauri is quite short. Whether we find a habitable planet when we arrive is another matter entirely.

Our two jobs from now on are to learn about and maintain the Dinkshif Drives, and to find our first level mates and start producing babies. We have established a pairing register that must be maintained. There is one simple rule. You stay with your chosen mate until you have produced a child. You will then look at the register and choose another mate for the next child. The parentage of each child will be recorded to ensure maximum diversity when they mature and have children.

Friends, the old ways and institutions of Earth are gone. We have to survive. This does not mean we do away with love and loyalty to your partner. It simply means you will need to spread that love and be understanding to many partners over time, in order to suppress any jealousy that may arise. We will need to put aside our mores and concepts of modesty. We live in these cramped surrounds until we can make planet fall. Just as we eat together, sleep and every other activity that humans do, so we will learn to ignore a couple in intimacy or the nakedness of someone taking a physical shower to relax from the youniform pressures. Whatever develops from our small community will mold the society of the future. We learned the concept of “shame” according to the scriptures, from the Garden of Eden story. There is no more Garden. There is no more shame.”

The group sat somewhat stunned. The content of Fuller’s delivery had been carefully discussed and constructed by the council which included all the senior adults and Felicity and Shaw. That pair had attended Fuller’s summons together, even though only Shaw had been requested, expecting to be reprimanded or worse for their extra vehicular activities. Instead, Fuller had talked the issue over and explained to them that their apparent breach of discipline was just jumping the gun on what was required.

Now Shaw and Felicity exchanged smiles as a buzz of subdued conversation came from the assembled student cadets and the President’s secret service staff, who owed their lives to their job and dedication to the President. There was an even balance of men to women in the group, the president’s detail always being half and half to take care of the First Lady and other female guests. Fuller had semi consciously marvelled at that fact, jesting in his mind that it was almost planned that way and not the chance of the draw.

“Ladies and gents!” Fuller called out, “Take your time, find the partner you can live and work with for the next year or so. Guys, find the partner you are prepared to take care of when she is carrying your child. Ladies, find the guy who is going to take care of you. But most of all, for all here, find the partner you can work with twenty four seven. It will not be easy.”

There was a sudden turmoil from the back of the group as two of the girls bounced around in the low gravity effect and made like cats having a brawl on the backyard fence. They were kicking and clawing, shouting and screaming as they laid into each other. “he’s mine!” Screeched one.

“I saw him first!” Yelled back the other as she pulled her opponent’s hair. The object of their attention and conflict was one of the young secret service men who sat back and watched in amazement. The other cadets watched with amusement as did Carver and Fuller, who had to pull a straight face and break up the wrestling match.

“Girls!” He said in his best parade ground voice. “This will NOT do! We do not have the time to engage in petty rivalry. The pairing decision is not yours alone to make, so settle down.” He had edged between them, and even then they tried to claw the other around him. He had no way of subduing or incarcerating them until they calmed down. The youniforms had prevented any physical injury to the pair and it was only their ego that was bruised. They eyed each other and sat down with the cabin between them. One looked at the other and hissed at her like a feral cat.

“Ladies and gents, let me have your attention.” Fuller commanded the moment. “Anything like this happens again and all involved will be held to account. You will be locked up or disabled in some way if you disrupt life on this fragment.” He looked at both girls in turn, a hard, penetrating stare that left them cowering. “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” he roared.

Both girls curled up in their seats crying. They may have been the creme of intellectual youth to have won their berth on the transport, but they were still just children.

Fuller had turned attention to Dinkshif Drive theory and was explaining the principles of Faster Than Light travel based upon what was known as the Rampay Anomaly.

“You are all knowledgeable in contemporary physics or you would not be sitting here today, but for the sake of those who come from other walks of life, I am going to explain in simplistic terms and analogies so everyone starts on the same playing field.

Once there was a man named Newton who developed laws of motion, gravity and other physical constants that hold at relatively low speeds and theoretical non resistance. That works most of the time.

Then along came Albert Einstein who determined that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. That light speed was an absolute. He found that for conservation of mass and energy, energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light. The Theory of Relativity.

Then along came Neugee Rampay, an Indian Physics professor, who said that Einstein was only partially correct. He propounded that light is absolute in its relative universe. Take light out of this universe and all the Laws of Relativity fly out the door.

Neugee compared us to fish in a fishbowl. That glass is the boundary of the fishy universe and we are confined to the waters within the bowl. He therefore considered the means by which our fish could jump out of the bowl. Not just jump out, but also survive. We need to take our water with us on the jump. Where are our fish jumping to? That is the risk. We don’t know what is outside the fish bowl, so we need a fail safe to be able to get back.

The speed of light is absolute only in this universe. This universe is our fish bowl, therefore it is reasonable to assume that there are other universes out there, other fishbowls, and maybe something else between them.

The Rampay anomaly states that if one sends a beam of light to say, Alpha Centauri, that beam is going to take about four years to reach its destination. Time dilation is not a consideration. However, if we are on a vessel travelling at light speed and we have significant mass, then time dilation aboard the vessel tells us that several thousand years have passed in the universe in the four years that the vessel took to reach Alpha Centauri. This theoretical paradox is the basis of the Dinkshif Drive. Frames of reference dictate the absoluteness of light speed. Dinkshif theorized that if the homogenous subject of the light speed travel could be made subject to an alternate frame of reference, that is we jump out of out fishbowl, then we can travel at the light speed of that relativistic frame until we reach the limit. We then extend the same process to a third frame and so on. The inherent problem is in returning to our own, original universe at the end of the journey.

Dinkshif reasoned that just as he had to swim the length of the pool using individual strokes, small, incremental pulses, then so too should the reference frames be created, used and discarded incrementally, instead of using one full universe frame at a time.

The Dinkshif drive took this “fishbowl” idea to a new level. The nano-quantum technology looked to the micro level of particle physics and created “psuedo-universes” by looking into the micro universes from outside their fishbowls and altering the relativity of these flash universes. The resulting particle emanation from this relativistic dissociation was orders of magnitude faster than light speed in our universe, resulting in thrust faster than the speed of light.

Dinkshif then addressed the issue of mass becoming infinite as it approaches light speed by creating a charge field to contain the drive and its vessel, an egg shaped cocoon of captured extra universal particles and formed a shell, much like an electron shell on an atom, around the drive vessel. The only thing that could penetrate this shell were the particles themselves.

Inside the shell, other universe, outside, this universe. A simple change of frames of reference.

The last effect of the Dinkshif drive was almost as astounding as the drive concept itself. The laws of relativity were never suspended or changed, at least not those of our universe, so the faster than light particles that left the shell as reaction mass had to suddenly conform to the laws of physics of this universe. As did too the very outer layer of the shell.

The infinitely small particles at many times the speed of light had to revert to infinitely massive particles limited to the speed of light. The outer shell and the reaction masses instantaneously transmuted into heavy metals and one heavy inert metal in particular. The Dinkshif drive left a trail of pure gold dust in its wake. The alchemists dream had really been a reality.

Dinkshif had also taken a practical look at his creation. The Pseudo Universe drive was useless for close in manoeuvring, so he added auxiliary reaction mass thrusters that could be fuelled with any material that could be pulverized or liquefied. He realized that his drives would end up far away from home without a gas station is sight. Little did he ever imagine that not even home would be in sight, for eternity.”

The network was shaken by an “X” buzz tone that was rarely heard. Peepers sent out an enquiry as to who had buzzed the girls’ act. It was Charonelle. “Well! Go on Charonelle. Tell us why you buzzed that last act.”

“Oh Peepers, I was of two brains about buzzing them. They are just so innocent and such yummy girls. Look at them! But on the other hand the whole act was too contrived. It lacked the professionalism that we expect by this stage of the game and I don’t think they will go much further.”

“You do recall we are not buzzing now, Charonelle?”

“Yes, but I just couldn’t help myself. Some of these acts cannot possibly make it through. These two are wasting our time. I think they should be taken into stasis right now.”

“If we do that the others will start questioning what is going on. Howley, what do you think?”

“I would like to give them one more chance. You have to consider that the previous two copulation performances have truly eclipsed all other acts before them, Now that Fuller has given the green light to unrestricted relationships, who knows what sensations these two might bring us. I am predicting a glut of sex acts coming up, so the best ones will have to truly be spectacular. You take these luscious little kittens out of the running and who knows what we will miss. I mean, look at the shlong...” There was another uproar on the net.  “Come on! Excuse me! What am I supposed to call a reproductive organ of that size, people? Let me finish!... Look at the size of the shlong on that young man and think of the sensations he could provide with either of these two nubile, ripe, hot, oooohhhh... I’ve set myself off again just thinking about it. Hmmm? I guess that’s all I can do anyway...”

“Calm down Howley. Keep your dural membrane on! I tend to agree with Howley, Charonelle, so I am voting to keep them going a little longer.”