“This prompted us to take sightings an’ do some measurements of our very own. Good enough measures to reckon a fell fac’.”
Hamish hated the way this man milked drama with every opportunity. But he was clearly expected to ask.
“What fact is that, professor?”
“Why, the rhaatid fac’ that the speed of our good vessel is no-quite up to what it should be, mon.”
Hamish turned to Lacey. “I know this ship is a bit heavy. But how far off could we possibly-”
He stopped when she closed her eyes.
“By a factor of more than a hundred,” Lacey said.
“What?”
If he could have asked for a less realistic emulation of a human body, Hamish would gladly trade right now. This virtual copy felt awash in chemical reactions of astonishment and despair. Or simulations that were all too similar to the “real thing.” Above all, though, he wished that the next words came from anybody else, other than the Jamaican pop-scientist.
“Bodderation, eh? At this velocity, we won’t even escape the system sol-ar, just orbit through de old Kuiper Belt an’ loop back aroun’ the sun again, eon after eon. Maybe snap some pictures of Pluto or Tyche or Planet X or whatever iceballs we happen upon.
“But no aliens. No new star systems.
“An’ that’s not even the biggest bloodclotty thing, mon.”
With a reluctant sense of foreboding, Hamish forced himself to ask.
“What… is the biggest… thing?”
“Zeen, why de fact that Earth is no even tryin’ to correct the problem, with new laser shoots. It seems, my old fren an’ adversary, dat wicked old world-dat Babylon we come from-has done abandoned us to our fate.”
93.
By now this crystal ship, a mere two meters long but packed with passengers and data-cargo, should have already entered the Oort Cloud of comets, starting at ten thousand times the Earth’s distance from the sun… not poking along at just five hundred or so astronomical units.
Worse, their apparent speed was abysmal. Why had Earth failed to provide the promised boost, filling their sail with intense laser pulses, propelling it to 5 percent of lightspeed?
Hamish sat at an edge of the glassy plane. Half listening while others argued behind him, he dangled his long legs over the seemingly vast interior of the probe. If measured by an external observer, he sat less than fifteen centimeters from the cylinder’s central axis. In fractal terms, the depth might be infinite.
Techies kept waving their arms and conjuring into existence various instruments to measure the problem… as if a hundred-fold shortfall in velocity were something you could “analyze and solve.” Anyway, there were major obstacles to looking outside.
First one thing; any view backward-toward Sol and Earth-was blocked by the great big cargo container. “So we can’t get a precise Doppler measurement, only rough estimates on how fast we’re leaving the sun,” explained a boffin.
Another impediment-they could manifest telescopes and things with a wave of the hand, but only down here at a middling fractal scale, where “magic” was possible, where mist obscured most of the starry vista. It was futile trying to drag the instruments “upward,” close to where crystal met space. Made of virtual wish-stuff, the tools simply evaporated, upon approaching the boundary wall. Only autonomous uploaded passengers-or AUPs-could survive next to that harsh, outer reality.
“The cause of it all may be political,” Lacey Donaldson suggested. “Our consensus to build a space factory and laser was never complete or universal. The Renunciation Movement still had a lot of strength, back home. Under new leadership, perhaps spurred by some bad event, populist know-nothings may have taken power and stopped the process.”
Ouch, Hamish thought, recalling his own turn at the helm of that worldwide faction.
“And hence,” continued the mellow voice of Oldest Member, “the problem may just be temporary. It often happens that a species will take a pause, work through some emotional issues, then resume production.”
“That happened several times on Turbulence Planet,” added Courier of Caution. “Hence, it is possible, at any point, that our acceleration pushes may resume.”
Normally, that might have cheered Hamish. But right now, he found any sign of agreement between Om and Courier depressing.
Looking downward, he saw immense depths of ever-increasing complexity and pondered. Why not dive down there, right now? Start exploring. Try those magical abilities. Check out the wonders that other passengers have already built, through sheer wish-power… and maybe start building some of my own?
All my life I was known for creativity. This could be my real chance. To show what I’ve got. To imagine greater than anybody!
That had always been the plan, anyway. Even if their probe had been on target, with every hope of success at the other end, he still would have spent ninety-nine point nine nine (and so on) percent of the time either sleeping or amusing himself in games, simulations, and make-believe playgrounds.
At least at this distance we’ll still have a slim supply of solar energy to tap. In the cold, unlighted depths of interstellar space, time itself would slow down for all inhabitants, as the crystal ship conserved power.
“Well,” one of the humans behind him said, “if that were the case-if they shut off the laser-you’d think they’d have the decency to tell us!”
Professor Noozone snorted.
“Tell ten million little lumps o’ glass that everythin’s all fit n’ frock? Dat we should jus’ wait aroun’ a little for de real-life Earth folk to finish squabblin’? Now why would they feel obliged to do that? Remember we’re not people. Not citizens. We are probe-entities, zeen? Mere replicants aboard a dread zeppelin that’s goin’ nowhere. And jus’ one machine emissary out of millions. We’re quattie, mon. They owe us neegle.”
Shut up, Hamish wished. But the voice continued.
“I t’ink we need to accept another possibility, bredren an’ sistren. Yeyewata. That this may be no mere setback politic-al. We must consider that the very worst has happen. That de ol’ wicked world has finally done it.”
“Done what?” someone asked.
“Why, done stepped into a zutopeck pit. Forsaken Jah an’ done gone where rude bwoys all wind up.”
“What do you-”
“That Earth has gone and blown itself up, mon! The ginnygogs have wrecked all hope. It’s over. An’ that’s why nobody be callin’ us on de phone.”
During the long silence that followed, Hamish envisioned the crystal-their entire universe-traveling several thousand kilometers farther from the sun. A long way… and a pathetically useless pittance.
Finally, Lacey Donaldson spoke in a soft voice, very small.
“I wonder what it was… which failure mode. The odds were always against us. There were so many ways to mismanage the transition… to blow it… even before external influences arrived to make matters worse.
“It could have been a war. A designer disease. A food collapse. A calamitous physics experiment, Another eco-mess. Or…”
She stopped as her voice seemed to choke off.
Hamish stared harder into the depths. One half of his view was taken up by the shimmering inner wall of the ship, its aft end plunging almost vertically. And just on the other side of that barrier, a sheer massif of dark brown. The “box” that Noozone and the others had been trying to study-till far more serious news crashed in. News of failure. Of abandonment.