116: REVIEW

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Shortly after Hylara passes the sun, Captain Klees calls a meeting. “Let’s go over what we know about… everything. Everything started with the Antarcticans developing the Kleiner array. This allowed us to view and study exoplanets in much greater detail than previously, and actually make estimates on which ones would be good for colonisation. The public version of the story is that this promoted a natural surge of enthusiasm for interstellar colonisation, and the majority of major nations came together to fund the Javelin Program. According to the late Captain Sands, the truth of the matter is that Antarctica was developing some kind of colonisation effort of its own, and international spies caught wind of this and the Javelin Program was started to beat them to it and prevent one nation from laying claim to everything within reach. Agents were recruited to keep an eye out for Antarctic sabotage efforts during colony development and prevent them; Captain Sands was one such agent.

“We don’t know the fate of the other javelins. We do know that our javelin was staffed with a labour force of four thousand convicts, as well as one thousand free volunteers, some of whom were aware of the convicts and some of whom were not. The possibility of rebellion was dealt with by the installation of kill switches in the hearts of this labour force; that, plus the copious supplies of neurostimulators on board, presumably to assist in heavy labour, suggests a certain attitude of disposability towards our lives that I don’t like.”

“Which doesn’t make sense,” I say. “Filling out the ship with convicts because you can’t get enough volunteers, that I understand; they made the project sound incredibly popular and in high demand on Earth but that was clearly just marketing. But no matter the source, living colonists are valuable. I mean, rot, they would’ve had to pay actual money for you guys, whereas they get us volunteers for free. I know we have stored embryos and artificial wombs, but the less actual living colonists you can keep alive, the most likely the colony is to fail. Colonists aren’t disposable.”

“But colonists are tradeable for benefits,” Tinera says. “On Luna, lives are risked in the mines because there’s a lot of fiddly work that needs to be done by living people; machines can’t do everything. This ship was built with only the vaguest idea of what Hylara would be like and no idea what might go wrong, what might need human labour and human strength. Endangering lives in hazardous work to get systems in place faster? That’s a trade that a lot of people would make. Like you said, there’s stored embryos. So long as there’s a couple of thousand survivors, the rest are disposable, if the gain is worth it.”

“They clearly wanted as much versatility as possible,” Captain Klees says, “including the option to push people past their limits if necessary. So the Courageous was staffed as such and launched. But there were two secret projects aboard, which may or may not be somehow related to each other. The first was an experiment in creating a more intelligent and adaptable artificial intelligence. This was probably based on the well-known smaller models where animal brain tissue is used to interface with machinery to create ‘halftificial intelligence’. In a far, far more ambitious project, the Courageous used a new type of synnerve and an altered AI to allow said AI to outsource parts of the decision-making process to a collective of human subconsciouses. We’re unsure how direct or coherent this was; whether the minds understood any part of what they were processing or not. We do know that, to get a decent response time, the AI shut down the chronostatic field of the colonists whose minds it claimed; as such, potential colonists were genetically engineered in advance in what was very likely an attempt to extend their lives. According to the doctors, this seems to be tentatively successful; at least, the colonists whose brains were taken over did not visibly age in chronostasis more than anyone else, and none of the tests that they were able to do on the bodies showed any signs of such ageing. It is as yet unknown how this engineering will affect those of us who are up and about out of chronostasis.

“This AI project involved multiple sophisticated secret advances in several fields. As such, it’s probably done by the Antarcticans that Captain Sands was so worried about. We don’t know why, or how it fits into sabotaging the colonisation of Hylara, if it does at all.

“Multiple people on board were involved in this project. Dor Delphin of Delphin Synthetics, a synthetics company nominally based in Texas but that is actually a shell for an Antarctican research and development company, is on board. Due to being both closely related to the CEO and primary owner of Delphin Synthetics, and being a scientist in his own right, we suspect that he might be involved in this brain project somehow. We have no confirmation of this – it’s theoretically possible that he’s uninvolved and simply wanted to use his money to start a new space society that he could rule. It’s also possible that he’s just here as a regular colonist and his family connections are irrelevant. However, with the family and the qualifications and the influence exerted to put him at the bottom of every priority list and thus make sure he wouldn’t be woken for duty, it’s likely he’s involved. Several members of the two astronaut crews were also involved. Engineer Richard Rynn-Hatson on Captain Kae Jin’s crew was involved, and responsible for genetically engineering the colonists in Chronostasis Rings 1 and 5 to make them viable candidates for the AI takeover. He succeeded in engineering CR1 but died before completing CR5. He must have had at least one other accomplice on Sienna Kae Jin’s crew, because somebody told the AI which brains were and were not viable for takeover; he couldn’t have done this in advance because the AI never took the brains of those in CR5 who he didn’t manage to dose before death.

“We don’t know how many of Captain Kae Jin’s crew were involved with the project, or whether Kae Jin herself was or not. We do know that about a quarter of the second crew were involved in the project, and Captain Reimann was not. During his captaincy, Reimann became suspicious of the AI and discovered the project. He eventually resorted to using physical force, deciding to cut off the AI’s access to its stolen brains…” Captain Klees glances at Tal… “but couldn’t simply eject CR1 and 5 because he had smuggled aboard a loved one into CR1. Instead he resorted to simply killing the compromised colonists one by one, which went disastrously and kicked off the situation that involved all of use getting woken early.

“There was also a second plot with the Courageous, which may or may not be related to the first. The engines were built to carry the option for sabotage; the AI had the ability to destroy them if certain conditions were met. We’re not sure what those conditions are. We have no reason to think that anyone on board knew about this; indeed, we have reason to believe that Captain Kinoshita, and thus probably her co-conspirators, did not know, in the form of her diary. This sabotage was partly triggered on the aft engine two years into the journey; the part triggering and the timing strongly suggests that this triggering was an accident. The crew had three choices; turn the ship around and use the fore engine for the rest of the acceleration, which would’ve put the ship in great danger if it broke also; head back for Earth and report mission failure; or complete the journey much slower. They chose the latter.

“Rynn-Hatson waiting until the last possible moment to complete his genetic engineering task suggests that this extended trip threw off the AI project timeline. If he was meant to act right before the second crew woke up, it would make more sense to put him on the second crew and save having to have conspirators on both crews. His actions suggest that he might have been worried about the project running over too long a timeframe with the ship moving slower, and started things as late as possible. But we have no way to know whether that’s actually the case. However it affected the AI project, it seems that they probably weren’t aware of the sabotage plan, or at least were surprised by its early partial triggering. This also might be the Antarctican sabotage that Captain Sands was worried about, or it might not.

“Either before or shortly after we launched, something else was sent towards Hylara. It almost definitely wasn’t carrying passengers, because it was presumably intended to move faster than us, and was probably not particularly complicated, or its building and launch would be well-known. It’s possible that it is complicated and elaborate and they just didn’t start building it until after we’d left, so we wouldn’t have heard about it, but I don’t think that’s likely. It’s currently on or in the vicinity of Hylara, and the Courageous was preprogrammed to signal it when we arrived and receive a signal in turn. This is most likely either the signal to destroy our engines and contaminate our air, or the signal to not destroy our engines and contaminate our air, one of those two. We have no direct confirmation that this is what the signals are for, however.

“Finally, the atmospheric measurements of Hylara taken from Earth were extremely vague and error-prone due to the distance of the planet; this was known when they were taken. While most of the data taken on earth was confirmed by our readings a couple of months ago, we detected a much thicker atmosphere protected by an ozone layer. The only known cause of this is oxygen in the atmosphere, and the only known cause of that is life. One hypothesis is that Earth did detect this and lied about the atmosphere, and the engine sabotage was their response – they sent a probe to look at the life and decide to either let the Courageous enter orbit or not, depending on what they found. This does fit with the evidence but it involves people discovering convincing evidence of alien life and then building a complex plan while keeping it secret, which is unlikely. A more reasonable response to the discovery of interstellar life would be to go public and staff the Courageous with scientists who understand what’s involved and are willing to devote their lives to its study. We’ve got a clear shot of Hylara without the sun behind it now, so when the engine is cool enough we’ll take another look and get a reliable read on the atmosphere and whatever else we can learn. As yet, we have no real information on whether Earth as a whole, or Antarctica, or either of the crews of the Courageous, knew about this oxygen atmosphere. Sam, how long until the engines are cool enough to take the new reading?”

“About two hours.”

“And what’s our time to orbit?”

“About sixty two days, depending on my piloting skills.”

“Alright then.” He rubs his hands together. “Everyone, take a two hour break. Then… well, take a longer break if you want; there’s no reason anyone has to be present for the reading except me and Sam. But.”

But of course we were going to be there for the reading.

A chance to look at our home and see, once and for all, whether we were wrong about the ozone.

Or about anything else.

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