I see. Well, Tatiana, it looks like we are stuck here for about four months. You got anywhere you need to be?
No place particularly, just wherever you planned to go is fine with me.
I guess we can spend some time exploring the ship and getting to know each other a little better. I thought a laugh but I wasn't sure if it communicated as I had planned.
Well, we only have four months. Tatiana turned and winked at me. We better save the last two weeks for exploring! She giggled and released herself from the safety chair and plopped down in my lap to kiss me.
CHAPTER 14
Tatiana and I had spent the better part of the last two months downloading as much information from the alien computer systems as we could manage without getting brain dead. Learning the information was the hard part. Getting it into our permanent memories was easy. We even understood it immediately as the nanomachines rewrote the neural pathways in our brains. The problem was learning to access and implement all of the data in timely and useful manners. Analogously, you might have known the alphabet for years before you really knew all of the eccentricities of spelling, writing, and grammar. Well, imagine having all of the knowledge of mankind and then some extra alien stuff thrown in there in just a few weeks. We were just now spelling; writing and grammar would come later.
We had started trying to develop a plan for our lives once we got the space drive things up and running again. First we wanted to try to rescue as many abductees as we could. We also felt we could take this ship back to the Earth Moon base that Mike had told us about and enlist their help. Although our guesses were that they would have a hard time believing we weren't aliens at first. I figured to just let them check our DNA. Tatiana wasn't sure that would be enough.
But first things were first. The ship was still two months from being repaired completely and other than plot, plan, and play we really had nothing else to do. So, what we ended up doing was to plot, plan, and play. Go figure.
As things progressed and the repairs to the ship moved along, occasionally Mike and I would steal a minute to discuss things that I didn't want to bring Tatiana up to speed on. I was exploring the bridge of the alien ship one evening while Tatiana was napping and Mike and I were able to have a nice long discussion.
Mike, I wanted to talk to you about your physical design.
What do you want to know, Steven?
Is this the general block diagram of your architecture? I thought of the diagram that I had developed for the Air Force, the CIA, and that W-squared organization. Mike seemed surprised as to how detailed our reverse engineering of him had been.
This is a correct top-level block diagram, Steven. How did you get it?
I figured it out. Well, me and a few others.
My question is about this data that appears from nowhere and is encrypted—what is it and where is it being passed to and from?
Yes, Steven. I understand your question. It will be somewhat difficult to explain to you as human physical models of the universe are quite different from the ones the Grays use. But I will attempt to explain it in human physics terms.
Wait a minute, Mike. Why not teach me the Gray physics?
I will Steven, but that will take considerably longer than it took for you to learn human knowledge. I have already approximated that it would take several weeks for, specifically you, Steven, to assimilate that amount of knowledge.
Okay, Mike. I'll take your word for it. So let's hear it in human terms.
Very well, Steven. Each of the sub central processing units, as you have called them, are indeed quantum connected to each other and this is how the data is transferred between locations within the main physical body of the cube. The central portion where the data seems to "fall through" as you think of it is the open end of a Superstring, or possibly another description might be a miniature wormhole—although I am not certain if wormhole actually fits exactly and I will explain why. The—let's call it a string for now—is tied on one end to the crystal's main I/O port. That string then is connected to the—again there is no human equivalent here—let's call it a network of strings. All other SuperAgents—again your words—are connected through the network in a similar manner.
It was obvious to me what Mike was describing—after all, I had spent most of my life surfing, and Sequencing on the Framework. And this was exactly what he was describing. The only difference was that this was some sort of universal spacetime fabric or quantum foam or silly string Framework.
Mike, you mean the universe is all connected in some sort of Framework or Internet-like way in some kind of Universe Wide Web?
That is correct, Steven. It took millennia for the Grays to develop ways to tap into it but the model is that all things in this universe were once a singularity and therefore are all quantum connected to some degree. Even the very fabric of spacetime itself is connected to itself and everything else. The coupling amplitude of this quantum connection is extremely small for some things and large for others. Once the coupling mechanisms are understood, manipulating spacetime becomes quite . . . routine.
So Mike was describing that each of these crystal SuperAgent machines were like your home computer and they were each tied to the Universal Internet through a mini wormhole or a Superstring or some damn physical phenomena that humans hadn't figured out. This string then would connect to a network of hubs and routers that are actually inherent in the fabric of the universe—wow! As I thought about it, I began to realize that it would take some serious technology to map all of these connections and generate addresses for all of the SuperAgents—just like it would be damned near impossible to go out and measure all of the addresses on the Internet II or Framework. But you can set up Internet Protocol information packets that go out and search for a path to another particular connection. That is what Agents and Webcrawlers do. Now I understand the need for these artificial intelligences like Mike.
Mike, how are the data packets actually physically transferred over one of these string connections?
Well, Steven, the easiest way to think of it is like conduits—here is where the wormhole description nearly fits—and the data is sent as photons through the wormholelike conduit and routed around through the network of conduits until it gets where it needs to go. Another human physics analogy would be that the string is oscillated transversely and sets up a standing wave between the central processing unit and the nearest hub. This process cascades from one hub to another until it gets to the computer on the other end of the network. The quantum interference information is transferred then inside the computer and the massive amounts of data will quantum teleport from one computer to the other instantaneously. Of course the lag time is the time it takes the interference information to travel from one computer through the—Network—to the other computer. Sometimes this can take several seconds depending on how far away the other computer is.
Man, I thought, several seconds to send data from one star system to another. That is amazing! I whistled and nodded my head. Awesome!
Oh no, Steven. Merely sending data from within a galaxy only takes nanoseconds. The distances I was referring to were hundreds of millions of light years, although the Grays have very little reason to go that far as their population only spans a third or so of this galaxy and a little more than half of Andromeda.