06

Disclaimer:

This is a work of fiction. All characters are legal adults and over 18.

Foreward:

This is a work I started on during the Pandemic when there was little outside contact. I'd read an article about the James Webb telescope. Taking an adventure to Proxima B seemed a wonderful thing to do, given the current circumstances of being stuck inside. I'm putting this up because I realize that, whatever form it's in, this is the only way it will ever hatch.

The story IS complete, and sitting on a hard drive, so, yes, there is an ending. It's long, and I will try my best to do a tolerable job of editing and keeping a cadence of uploading the chapters.

There are only three sex scenes, which makes it quite scant given its size. It was intended as a space adventure to escape somewhere else, with erotic scenes for fun. It tries to lean more toward sci-fi than fantasy, as far as science and tech. One of those scenes is in this first upload, at least.

A short description:

An ambitious research director who believes her Father was lost to the stars seeks help from a forlorn AI researcher to create an FTL drive thought only to exist in rumor. Piloted by humanity's first stable artificial general intelligence, the newly christened ship Maxwell's Demon heads to the stars, but the crew and ship find themselves ill-equipped for such a novel journey. When the unthinkable happens, they're forced to make a difficult decision and hope their nascent AI can find a way to bring them home. It's an adventure for the history books, one they may not return to tell.

A few spoilers, in the form of keywords:

Android sex. Alien sex. Alien Gender Role Juxtapositions. Hyena. Furry. Nuclear reactors. Big boobs. Big alien boobs. Tails. Romance.

** Chapter 1: The Mystery of the Fuzanglong **

(location: The intra-solar CoreX Mining exploration vessel 'My Precious')

"Are you listening to me, Jennifer?"

"Not really," she said, staring at display readouts.

"Did you launch the seismic probe? We have a quota," John said, repeating himself.

"I did. I launched the probe. It's gone, like the first. No contact, no ground radar returns, no telemetry, nothing."

"I don't believe it. The chances of two defective probes ... it's never happened," John said.

"It's like there's something out there eating the EM spectrum. Can you roll us to port sensor array?"

"Ya, give me a bit. I've been station keeping on manual. I could swear this rock has an inertial reference frame that doesn't care about the Sun."

"Just figure it out," Jennifer said, crinkling her forehead.

John nodded when the ship's roll was completed. "Silvia, This is Precious, requesting an EM scan across our port sensor array."

"Silvia, Acknowledge."

A minute passed with a silent, but open comm channel. "Second sweep, microwave through gamma, are you seeing anything Precious?"

"Nothing. It ate everything. Are you sure your equipment is functioning?" Jennifer said.

"System checks are green. Could you repeat last transmission Precious, did you say it 'ate' everything?"

"Standby Silvia."

Jennifer turned to John. "Dark matter allows EM to pass right through, it doesn't interact with anything in the EM spectrum, it's detectable only via its gravity. This stuff, whatever it is, has the complement properties. It interacts with everything except gravity. It has no mass I can detect. It should be moving at the speed of light, not hanging out in the middle of our solar system."

"Maybe it's not in our universe, it could be a void strand, like the old deep space sailor rumors of the lost ship named Fuzanglong," John said smiling. A message icon from ISS Silvia blinked on his console.

Jennifer unbuckled herself and bent over John's pilot chair in a domineering manner. Her expression was in stark contrast to the smile he wore.

"I'm serious John. We've found something. I want you to mark this rock worthless, put it down as carbonaceous chondrite or some other crap mineral. Send it to corporate right away."

John was still smirking until Jennifer slammed her fist down on the console, canceling the incoming message from Silvia. "I'm not fucking around John."

"Alright, alright. Don't have an aneurysm. I read you Five by Five Boss."

-*-

The tip of a spanner wrench tumbled end over end, held in place by Jennifer's finger on one end. She batted the free end again in the zero gravity.

"You know that trick won't work so well in about 60 seconds, once the main fusion drive starts up," John said, stepping over the lip into the habitat module. "You best get buckled in, Boss. The burn for home is laid in."

"I'm sorry I snapped earlier. I know you were just making a joke. It hit a little too close to home."

"How so?" John said, pulling himself along the handholds, settling into the table chair as the first bite of thrust-induced gravity kicked in.

Jennifer leaned forward, brushing her hair back over her shoulder. "We both know the official story of the Fuzanglong, right?"

"Sure, " John said, "The ship was reported as a reactor drive malfunction. Its last known plot from Targus tracking station on Mars showed a highly eccentric orbit, toward the outer system. It was declared all hands lost."

"Right, and after it disappeared, all corporate stock for the subsidiary schedule D funded mining company was sold. It was removed from the exchanges. The MOTC flight crash investigations couldn't even find a representative to discuss their findings with."

"Ya, but that's not what I meant. I was referring to the conspiracy theory: that the Fuzanglong was an interstellar ship powered by exotic matter."

"My country has a different story. They believe the Fuzanglong was a trial by the Chinese Expace corporation, a prototype asteroid-cracker, and that they, not the company we work for, were the first to successfully split an asteroid. Something went wrong during their first attempts, and though the crew was recovered from high endurance life support pods by rescue workers, they eventually died from radiation poisoning. The ship was scuttled, on purpose, written off as failed tech -- an elaborate insurance scam.

I'm told my Father was the captain of that ship, that he was responsible for a reactor explosion on the Fuzanglong. My family name was crucified. 'A shame so great that ancestors of eight generations can feel it' is the expression in my native tongue."

John's mouth had fallen wide. "I'm sorry, about your Father. I didn't know. Why'd you never tell anyone?"

"Would you? I never accepted that story anyway. There are few doors open to one with a disgraced Family name in my country. When I attempted to gain entry into college I was denied. I went to the corporate office of Expace, the only place I ever knew my Father worked, and sat outside, a young woman, with a sign: 'My Father, the captain of the Fuzanglong, was not a criminal'.

People spit on me as they walked by, and smeared rotten vegetables in my hair. You have to remember this was after the war, my country was trying to rebuild. Any failure in business was intolerable. Anyway, a gentleman in an unbranded transport came to me offering a ride. He claimed to be an acquaintance of my Father. He arranged for my acceptance to ADXP in the United States with an American identity. I never heard from him again until I graduated, and that's how I ended up working at CoreX.

The thing is John, I think your stateside rumor is true. I think the Fuzanglong was an interstellar ship."

"Really? If it was, why hide it? Why would Expace go to all this trouble to cover up the first interstellar mission?"

"You have no idea what life is like in other parts of the world, do you? I grew up in a country of over four billion people forced to live in a landlocked mass of less than four million square miles after the last world war. We build artificial sand bars to live on. Can you imagine what that's like?

Your country was founded by expansionism, The doctrine of discovery was what the Europeans called it. It provided spiritual, political, and legal justification for colonization or seizure of land not inhabited by Christians. There is no space left on Earth. In this day and age, we might as well just replace Christian with Terran."

"But we have strict laws on the claiming of Celestial Bodies. There's the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and the Intra-Solar Shared Mining Rights Consortium, which we abide by."

"High-minded words, and not even signed by all charter nations. You asked why someone would keep such a mission a secret. Well, some think it was a colonization ship, the first of many. Not something you'd broadcast, if you wanted to keep a new world all to yourself if you follow me. I think what we ran into is the same exotic matter that powered the Fuzanglong, and if I'm right, then I'm going to find out what happened to my Father."

** Chapter 2: The Mona Lisa of silicon **

"Q4 planning is starting in the Achievement conference room," beeped the message on Greg's datapad. He twirled a stylus around in his hand. Somewhere along the way his career was taken over by people who talk for a living, instead of building things. He teetered the continuum between listening to whoever was speaking, and the last time he saw Wendy.

"I'll be right there," he replied.

It wasn't difficult remembering the last time he saw Wendy; it burned in his memory like the noonday sun. There was a phone call, her car had slid off the road. Greg went to where her car was, an unmarked building in the infrequently traveled part of town.

"What happened? I thought you were going to be working at the paper today?" he said.

Wendy didn't say anything, she looked at him, a tear running down her cheek. She was wearing her hair down, brunette curls draping over her shoulders. Her car was wedged into the drainage ditch. A misjudged corner pulling into the office building parking lot.

"What is this place, why are you even here?"

"It's an abortion clinic ... I'm pregnant."

Greg ran to her, hugging her. "That's a miracle, we didn't think it was possible!"

"It's not," she said, her cheeks flushing red. She rubbed the wetness from her eyes. "It's not yours."

Greg's mouth quivered, starting to form the opening for the letter W, maybe the word 'who', or maybe 'what', but nothing came out.

"Damn you Greg, you're never home. You work all the time. When we came up with this idea of having a child, I thought: ya, maybe that will fix our relationship. Maybe that would bring you home to me, but then, even that couldn't work. It's like the universe was telling me something.

It's not me, Greg. It's never been me. You can't even give me a child, let alone your time, or your love.

For just a moment, I thought I could do this, bring this child home that wasn't yours, say it was a miracle, but I can't. I can't do it. I can't do any of it anymore," Wendy said.

Greg's attention snapped back to the present. "Are we setting up the staging environment or not?"

"No," Greg said, having no idea what question he answered. He was supposed to meet his parents for Dinner tonight. It was twenty minutes past when he'd intended to leave. He jogged to the parking lot. What was the point, he was already late. He could message and cancel. It's not like his Mother ever showed up anyway. Dad would forgive him. He pulled out his sat phone. "Don't forget dinner tonight. Your Mother is coming -Dad." waited patiently in his message queue.

Fine. He put on his jacket and helmet. He'd cheat. You could save twenty minutes of commute by cutting through the Arroyo in the back of the lab if you had a dual sport motorcycle. It required only one adolescent stunt, but it was a sure win against the clock.

-*-

Greg looked down while he was airborne; he'd cleared the only obstacle, the giant steel pipe that fed water to the sprawling city below. He landed on the compounded rubber spillway adjacent to the water pipe. Thwap, Thud! He coasted to an unplanned stop.

"Well, it had seemed like a good idea," he mumbled to himself.

He took off his helmet and carelessly tossed his jacket over the seat. The heat from the electric motor cooling fins melted its sleeve.

The drive chain was broken. His motorcycle was 40 years beyond being relevant, to say nothing of its age. He groaned as he stood from inspecting the chain, pain in his left knee reminded him he too was old. Rummaging through the pack of tools on the rear fender he found a pair of pliers and an empty roll of safety wire. "That's useless," he cursed to himself.

There'll be a ticket, plus an impound fee when they tow it, possibly even some backlash for his security clearance renewal, depending on how much of an asshole the local deputy wants to be, he thought. His sweaty disheveled hair reflected in the handlebar mirror. What the hell was I thinking? Wendy was right, he worked too much, and he began to wonder what even for: some underfunded AI research department?

He was too old to push anything this heavy out from the bottom of a sandy wash, and he felt it. Where was the young man who was going to change the world of artificial intelligence he wondered? He threw his bike down into the sand. It was worthless.

He walked for a half hour, then sat on a guardrail by the median strip, sweat dripping from his shirt while he fumbled to check his sat phone. His Father had agreed to give him a ride. He'd be here in a little while.

An automated transport whizzed by, the sophisticated driverless vehicle bringing a memory from his College AI classes. AI was a moving target. Centuries ago, we thought a computer would never play chess, but when we developed models enabling them to play, and win, we decided that wasn't intelligence. Next were self-driving cars, and conversational robots. Dedicated thought models, they were called, a flawless simulacrum of humans doing a task. Humanity rejected the notion that they'd been equaled, and tried even harder. They almost succeeded.

Artificial Thought Models ( ATMs ) were compositions of dedicated thought models. A master thought model acted as a free-spinning wheel, asking questions of all the other dedicated thought models. The ATM fitness function was simple: Partition size growth. An unquenchable, sometimes reckless thirst for novel reactions. Stagnate partition growth was a form of death, and that was the problem. All the ATMs launched to date lived brilliant but short lives. Whether it was a natural feature of their life expectancy, or they committed suicide, no one knew. It was the one problem that remained to be solved in AI.

The sound of copper wires vibrating at 800hz during regenerative braking startled him from his ruminations.

"Get in Einstein," came through a rolled-down window. Greg tossed his jacket, helmet, and gloves into the back. He flopped into the passenger seat.

"What happened?" His Father asked.

"I was running late from work, so I took the Arroyo shortcut."

"Auto drive," his Father said to the transport's onboard navigation. "You look like a bum. You know your Mother is coming tonight."

"So you said."

At their destination, the transport traveled a long concrete driveway with a xeriscaped yard that ended in a semicircle. Another drive paralleled it, serving as an exit. In the center of the courtyard was a fountain made from silicon, designed to look like an early CPU chip: the RA396, the last and greatest 5nm transistor chip ever made by IFAB before carbon nano-tube became the standard. It was the first chip with sufficient address space to run a Wave 0 Artificial Thought Model. Maybe it was pretentious to put such a trophy on your lawn, but Greg knew if he'd made the Mona Lisa of CPU chips like his Mother had, he'd put it on his lawn too.

At the dinner table, Mr. Colby straightened himself in his chair, arranging the silverware again, ignoring they had been perfectly placed by the help.

"Where's Mom?" Greg said.

"She was delayed, but she wanted to tell you, that she feels it's time you started contributing to the family business..."

"It's always about what Mother wants," said Greg, interrupting.

"Son, there's battles worth fighting, and then there's wasting your time. There's just no funding for what you want to do, and certainly not where you're at. You've published one paper in the last three years on ATMs. No one has done anything with the research you started, least of all, you."

"My paper still gets downloaded ... occasionally," Greg said, before numbly chewing his next bite. "It's a really hard problem space."

"I'm sure. At any rate, your Mother has arranged an interview."

"I don't want to work at IFAB, Father," Greg said, defiantly, setting his fork on the table.

Mr. Colby scarcely looked up from his plate while he meticulously sliced another piece of meat from his filet. He said, with no apparent irritation, "I hope you're not doing this to spite your Mother?"

"Someone will crack the puzzle of long-lived artificial intelligence. Maybe it will be me. I'm just in a transition season right now."

"Greg, just because you're willing to work for something, doesn't make that the right choice. You might try being more open, riding with the current of opportunities that life presents to you, instead of making everything about what you want."

"We've had this conversation before. I haven't changed my mind. Look, I've got to get my bike taken care of. Thanks for Dinner Dad. I'm taking the autocar home."

"I'll tell your mother you said hello," his Father said, sighing, folding his napkin and placing it on his plate.

-*-

Greg opened the door to his house, took three steps, and tripped over a cardboard box, a reminder of the growing disarray that was on the living room floor. He was packing some of Wendy's stuff. The task was resistant to completion.

This particular box was on its third attempted journey toward the door. The first time it made it into the living room before falling to the floor, along with its carrier who stayed there for 20 minutes saying: "I can't let go," repeatedly for the duration. The box was subsequently unpacked with each element of its contents placed in its previous location. He could do it this time. He grabbed the box and headed outside to the trash bin. There was a tink from something falling through the bottom of the box.

The plastic trash receptacle flopped open and he dropped the box in. He closed the trash lid and took in the fading Sun until he noticed a sparkle on the ground. It was a key ring that fell, a travel souvenir from a trip with Wendy to the Grand Canyon, a hologram of the canyon as seen from overhead. It was etched in translucent plastic. He held it so the Sun could hit it. The image appeared to float millimeters above the surface. It changed appearance correctly as you moved your viewing angle. There wasn't enough anger in his heart to throw this away. He looped the ring through his finger and checked his pocket for the keys to the flatport. He should get his motorcycle.

He opened the door to the vehicle, sat down, took the key ring, and clipped it around the display console support arm. He pulled out of his driveway and started down the two-lane. He checked his mirror for a right-hand turn. The setting sun reflected off of the hanging key ring activating the hologram, and broadcasting an emotion straight into Greg's unfocused mind. Dirt flared in a dusty cloud surrounding the vehicle, and warning lights flashed like Christmas across the vehicle's dashboard as the flatport veered off the road.

"Loss of road surface, check surroundings," the navigation system said.

Greg slammed the brakes on, his head smashing into the steering column.

"Shut up! Navigation Off.

No, No, No!" he said, wrenching the dura-vinyl grip of the steering wheel into twisted forms.

"I can't let go."