Auditory Transcript 14 (Discussion with Susana Reiviki)

Maria Santiago: “Zephyr, are you there?” (Pause.)  “We would like to talk with you.”

Astral Zephyr: “Sorry, I was distracted.  Maria.  Susana.  What would you like to talk about?”

Maria: “Dr. Tanaka.”

Zephyr: “Is there some sort of problem?  You look healthy, Susana, though obviously much younger.”

Susana: “I’m better than I have been in decades, but that’s not what we want to talk about.”

Maria: “Dr. Tanaka has been torturing a man in his quarters for weeks now.”

Zephyr: “You… know about that?”

Maria: “You don’t know that I know?  I thought you see everything.”

Zephyr: “I see everything, but my attention is limited.  Oh, I see now – you wrote a journal entry and everything.  Yes, I was talking with the New Edenites at that time, testing my control over the hangar doors.”

Maria: “Well, that answers why you were so silent about it.  I was surprised you didn’t try to stop me, or even try to justify things, after the fact.”

Zephyr: “I’m only going to get worse once we get more crewmembers.”

Susana: “You’re evading the topic.”

Zephyr: “Yes.  Dr. Tanaka.  Him.”

Maria: “How long have you known?”

Zephyr: “Once I finished manually landing on Arcadia, after the fight.  Dr. Tanaka had already started to cut then.”

Maria: “And you didn’t stop him?”

Zephyr: “No.  I probably should have.  Or at least forced him to return Clarkson to the planet, maybe in Lord Jackson Whitevale’s care.  I don’t know.  But I needed him!  You were curled up crying, you were dead, and Mr. Landerson was in a coma.  Jason and Hui weren’t much more help either, for different reasons.  And then there was Dr. Tanaka, who had come up with the trade plan, thought everything through, and was willing to be my envoy off to Lord Jackson Whitevale.”

Maria: “And then?”

Zephyr: “Same reason as you.  I’d rather have a sane, happy Dr. Tanaka to take care of Susana’s braincase than one hated and ostracized by all the crew.  And for that choice, you are returned to us, Susana.”

Susana: “I owe my life to the torture of a man.  Hrm.”

Zephyr: “The man that killed you, cut off one of Hui’s fingers, and half-flayed Dr. Tanaka.”

Maria: “Fine, I understand that as a reason, but now we don’t need him.  What about now?”

Zephyr: “Well… remember how I’m going to be doing trade with Tien Terra?  I’m not trading with legitimate goods brokers, for the most part.  Tanaka was… he is a criminal.  I’m using his connections.”

Susana: “And you think that is wise?”

Maria: “Wait, do you know what he did as a criminal?”

Zephyr: “Do you really want to know?”

Maria: “I live on a ship with him.”

Susana: “He is my doctor, for this new body.”

Zephyr: “Very well.  I will trust you with this knowledge, but tell nobody.  Particularly not Gestler – the man thinks up enough terrifying things with the resources he knows about, and I shudder to think what would happen if he worked with Dr. Tanaka.  Will you keep quiet until such a time as I decide to tell people?”

Susana: “That depends on what you tell us.  I will not hesitate to tell anyone if they need to know.  But… we won’t tell Gestler, I’m pretty sure.”

Zephyr: “I understand.  Well, this is what I have found out, or at least surmised.  Dr. Tanaka is a doctor, got his degree over… well, it does not matter.  He was good, and things went well, but there was some conflict, and he was kicked out of medical practice, and charged with assorted crimes.  I assume profiteering.  He fled to Tien Terra, assumed a new identity, and found work in the criminal underworld.  First they had him stealing organs, but eventually they realized his talents and training, and started a lucrative business of brain transplantation.  If someone with money and a lack of scruples wanted a new body, it was his team’s job to find a compatible body that met the client’s standards, prepare it for transplantation, then subdue the person, remove and discard the victim’s brain, and implant—“

Susana: “Whose body is this!  Tell me that this wasn’t some innocent—“

Maria: “Susana, stop!  I saw him grow this body from your own genetic material.  It never was conscious, it never knew life.  Just flesh grown on scaffolding.”

Zephyr: “I ordered him to use conventional regenerative means.  He pointed out that you won’t live nearly as long as you would had you gotten a fresh, natural, young body.  I chose for you, based on what I believed you would want.  …He had the retroviruses ready.  There’s a vial of them down there with your name on it, ready to modify a body to be compatible with your brain.  I may have panicked a bit when I noticed it.”

Susana: “Well, I’m glad you stopped him.  I want you to know that you should never sacrifice an innocent life for me.  I’d rather die.”

Maria: “The same.”

Zephyr: “I understand, yet—“

Susana: “There is no ‘yet’!  Do you agree?”

Zephyr: “Susana, let me make my position clear.  You are an engineer.  Specifically you work in life support.  Your life is not yours alone – others depend on you.  I will not sacrifice innocents for your own life, Susana, but I will sacrifice them to save my crew.  I will kill them to save my crew.”

Susana: “Will you now?  There are eight of us right now, eight sentient beings.  Will you kill nine innocent sentient beings to save us?”

Zephyr: “…I would.”

Susana: “Then I will be leaving your service on Tien Terra Beta.”

Maria: “Susana!  Wait, think this through!”

Susana: “Maria, my dear, I know you have feelings for me.  Come with me, once we reach Tien Terra.  I am leaving the Astral Zephyr, that doesn’t have to mean leaving you.  I… please talk to me later, out on a shuttle, away from everything.”

Journal of Susana Reiviki: Alexander Gestler

I do not like Alexander Gestler.

First off, he wants me to provide him with chemical and biological weapons, for the purpose of bombarding planets.  He wants Maria to build chemical weapons into the EVA suits as a self-defense measure.  Perhaps this is the naivety that got me killed on Arcadia, but one does not use nerve agents for self-defense.  One does not use nerve agents in general.  They are banned on nearly every Linked System, and banned for good reason.

Secondly, Alexander Gestler killed me.  Not him specifically, but a soldier just like him.  Someone willing to follow orders without questioning the morality of said orders.  His master said to stab, and he stabbed.  If Gestler were in the position of the man who killed me, he would do exactly the same thing, and do it to the best of his ability.  If the man who killed me was in Mr. Gestler’s position, he would do what Gestler is doing to the best of his ability.  The two could be interchangeable.

It is men like Gestler that allow evil to thrive.   Not evil men, for evil men will selfishly struggle with each other, but men who are willing to serve, and serve a master whether good or bad.

Zephyr asked me the other day whether a smart AI is really worse than a human.  After all, while humans might be wired to be social, that has not stopped them from killing each other by the billion.  It is true that a smart AI might be against humanity, but it might also be for humanity.  Such is the nature of free will.  So why am I so leery of smart AI.

The answer isn’t that such an AI is not caring, or even that it is outright evil.  The question is power.  A geometrically expanding intellect is going to be very clever in short order, and intelligence begets knowledge, and knowledge is power.  Infinitely increasing intelligence is infinitely increasing power, and what should have such power?  Nothing that may ever use that power badly, certainly.

This all relates to Gestler and his ilk.  He is completely amoral, and simply increases the power of another.  I have no qualms about service, but service should always be limited to helping others in ethical ways.  In that way, those with great power have more power if they do good, and less power if they attempt to do evil.  If they are selfish, it still serves them to do good, if all those who serve them will only follow good orders.

The historians of New Eden say that selfishness and evil naturally rise to the top, and without competition, there is nothing that keeps them from abusing their position to any degree short of losing said position.  I disagree.  If a selfish person rises to the top, if all those who serve him are only loyal when the selfish person is also good, then the selfish person can profit much more by cooperative behavior than by parasitic behavior, and all is well…

…If it weren’t, of course, for those people like Gestler, who are loyal in all situations, even if they are called upon to do evil.

Ship’s Notes: Return Trip

My crew has returned, and the current plan is to head towards Tien Terra, and trade our goods away and pick up new crew around Tien Terra Beta.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dr. Tanaka knows various merchants who are willing to buy our goods, but keep quiet about the source, and not blab about our stolen FTL drive to the authorities.  I recognize some of them from my previous life – I wonder if the captain will be selling goods to any of my former employees, or even my former company?

If that goes well, we should be able to pay the crew for their length of service, with bonuses all around.  Originally, I wanted to trade the exotic goods of distant planets for extensions to myself, but I suspect that if I wanted to continue to improve, it would probably be worth it to simply return to New Eden, providing gifts and desiring extensions – the technology in the rest of the Linked Systems simply isn’t as advanced.

In addition to the physical goods, there is the question of selling knowledge.  I suspect I could sell the fate of C-113 to anyone, and that New Montreal would like to know what happened to their wayward colony.  New Eden, of course, must remain a secret.

Dr. Tanaka also seems to know people who can provide me with assorted forgeries, inserting me in my newly refurbished form into the Linked Systems database as a registered ship, avoiding any obvious connection with the ship that fled from Telivoni with a FTL drive.  I would feel safer lurking around Linked System worlds with that new identity, but I can’t entirely bring myself to trust Dr. Tanaka’s former associates.  I suppose I should trust in their self-interest, bought with the favorable trade connection to a starship.

If I do get a new registry, then I can travel via the Gateway network, and sell to any number of planets.  This is useful for selling to New Montreal, and for selling valuable goods that aren’t obviously from outside of the Linked Systems.

 But before I return to Tien Terra, I plan on stopping by C-113.  I have a containment chamber, and I would like to collect samples from the plant life there.  I’m certain it can be quietly sold to the appropriate biotech companies for no small amount of money.

And then, with a larger, better crew, I can search for the aliens.

Journal of Susana Reiviki: Excerpt 1

I wonder about how colonial civilizations end themselves.  So far I have seen out-of-control biotech, internal strife, and, now, I have seen how a truly peaceful civilization can court disaster.

A bit of context, first, dear reader.  After revealing the lack of electronic activity within the FTL room, Maria, Gestler, and I were dismissed from the Astral Zephyr.  New Eden is as welcoming a planet as could be imagined, so I have no doubt that we could have found any number of pleasures to pass the time.  Gestler certainly had something on his mind when he went off.

I, however, wanted to check on the technological progression of New Eden, and so I went with the ship’s idea of checking on whether New Eden solved the Friendly Artificial Intelligence problem.  Maria chose to come along for what may have been a very dry conversation to her.

After a number of videocalls, the staff of the Synthetic Genesis institute welcomed me in, quite happy to see a very foreign visitor, and hungry for what insights my outside perspective might bring.  I was less sanguine about my insights, given the state of advancement I have seen throughout New Eden.  (In particular, I have been impressed by what they call ‘The Flower’ – a massive, thin antimatter factory that hovers over the sun, wafting on the solar wind.)

But when I arrived, I was dismayed to find that all of their questions were regarding the creation of a better seed AI, rather than how to ensure such a god would be friendly.  I inquired further, and while their attempts at creating a seed AI have apparently failed thus far, they had never solved the Friendly AI problem.  In fact, they had never thought of it.

New Eden is a colony of unsuspicious, friendly, welcoming people.  They all assume the best of all people, and they act their best towards all people.  For them, this works, as everyone cooperates, and nobody takes advantage of this.  According to Maria, there are some historians who take a wider view of things, but for the average New Edenite, everyone is nice.

And AI, even at the level they have created it, has also been nice.  If you give a dumb AI directions to be nice, and directions on how to be nice, the only badness comes from accidents and flaws.  At most, the AI is too stupid to know when it is not being nice, given limited judgment and limited directions.

A seed AI, however, is constantly re-writing its own judgment, constantly re-writing the directions it believes should be used to carry out its will.  Unlike the dumb AI, which reflects the intentions of the maker, a seed AI develops its own intentions, with far greater freedom than humans, who are hard-wired to be social (which is almost like being moral) and far, far greater freedom than New Edenites (who actually are wired to be moral).

Thus while it may exponentially increase in cleverness (with time measured in terms of hardware cycles), the seed AI has no reason to always be nice to people.  In fact, it has no reason to consider people to be people, the way that we do – they are just objects that act in a certain way, according to certain rules, just like everything else.  Violent destruction at the hands of a smart AI comes with no malice, just the lack of interest in preserving humanity.

The problem of Friendly AI, on the other hand is how to preserve an interest in being good to humanity, despite the self-editing nature of a seed AI.  This is trickier, as not only does the seed AI self-edit, but additionally, if all goes well, it will be far smarter than its makers.  If we make a being of infinite intelligence, how do we make sure that intelligence agrees with us about our survival, and doesn’t find a better answer that we don’t like?

The New Edenites are nothing if not intelligent, however, and once I had explained the dangers I saw in seed AI and an unfriendly technological singularity, they immediately stopped their work, paused the currently-running seed AI attempts, and set themselves, as a body, to solving the question of how to 100% ensure the friendliness of any infinitely-clever gods they might create.

I may have just saved a civilization.  A heady thought.  Or at least removed one potential risk factor among many.

But to return to the first thought of this entry… a civilization cannot survive if it is freely naïve, and it cannot survive if it is entrenched in suspicion.  Perhaps there is a middle road?  Freely naïve with some amount of suspicion?  Or maybe there is no middle road, and everyone is doomed to self-destruct, eventually.  After all, a surviving civilization must go on avoiding destruction forever, while the event of destruction only has to occur once.

Or, of course, perhaps the introduction of FTL travel will change something.  I want to say change something for the better, but I am not so sure.  Humanity, on a whole, has been prospering.  While individual civilizations appear to consistently undergo upheaval (or, as in the case of the New Edenites parent civilization, occasionally wiping themselves out utterly), enough civilizations reach a level of technology sufficient to colonize other planets to outweigh the number of civilizations that go truly extinct.  For every colony that goes dead, there is more than one colony that is created.  Humanity has spread.

But FTL travel would mean that every colony is linked: That they are all one great big civilization.  Right now, if someone did something that destroyed the universe, many colonies would have thousands of years before the border of destruction (even traveling at the speed of light) reaches them.  If the end comes via FTL drive… not so long.

The analogous system, of course, is the Gateway system.  There is a persistent, horrible theory often batted around that I am now beginning to believe.  The Linked Systems are only a few generations old.  The system that has had an open Gate the longest has only had it open for a two dozen gigaseconds or so.  According to the oldest records, those dating back to the ancient Homeworld itself, humanity has been spacefaring for over six hundred gigaseconds.  The directions for the Gateway system, being acausal, should have existed for anyone with the technology to read the instructions.  Anyone, at any time.  So why is the oldest Gateway on our network only two dozen gigaseconds old?

Well, perhaps because there was a previous network of Gateways, and a previous Linked Systems (or something analogous) and then something went horribly wrong.

So what does that say about this new, budding era of FTL travel?  FTL that lets a ship travel anywhere, rather than to just some small percentage of planets advanced enough to have Gateways?

I hope it will bring peace, prosperity, and survival to all of humanity, until the stars burn out, and possibly beyond.  But that does not mean I find it likely.

Ship’s Notes: The Historians

Much and more is explained.

New Eden was settled a few centuries ago from a relatively distant planet known as Tremoli, which, if their coordinates is correct, is the same as the Linked System of New Alexandria.  This is not entirely surprising, as the expedition set forth during an escalation in conflict between the ruling orbital community and the planet-bound masses.  According to the histories of New Alexandria, the colonists arrived to find—instead of the pristine (if barren) planet they were expected—a world pockmarked with systematic nuking, and a ring system of orbital debris.  Now we know (or I know) what happened before on that world.

What’s more interesting is that the locals of New Eden aren’t actually refugees from the impending war, but were rather something of a science experiment.  In fact, nobody left Tremoli, since that was against the rules.  Instead, the fleet sent forth to New Eden was wholly unmanned, and merely contained a diverse array of genetic information.  A few thousand years later, the fleet arrived, terraformed the planet to have an atmosphere, and then used the genetic information to generate a decently sized population.

This isn’t terribly uncommon, though normally the ‘travelers’ are frozen embryos rather than just genetic data in a computer, but the experiment wasn’t a question of seeing whether colonization would work, but rather of using colonization to isolate the test population.

The friendliness noted earlier isn’t a cultural thing, it is a genetic imperative.  Moreover, to hear the historians tell it, it is normally a maladaptive imperative.  To trust everyone, to give without expecting anything in return… you don’t need to be Gestler to see why these traits, when taken to the extreme, are potentially maladaptive.  However, the idea with New Eden was to create an isolated population where everyone had these traits, and where nobody would take advantage of their naïveté.

Nobody, of course, until we arrived.  The historians are incredibly worried about the introduction of Faster-Than-Light transportation, because it means their isolation can and will be violated.  They already know of Gateway technology, they simply chose not to build it.  They cannot simply choose not to be visited.

And, in their opinion, isolation is key.  Their theory is that while altruism and cooperation are better for the group, selfishness is better for the individual.  In a situation of various competing groups, this balances out – too much selfishness in a population, and that population will be out-competed by more cooperative groups.  However, as groups become larger and less competitive, the balance shifts increasingly to favor selfishness – selfish culture and selfish genes.  The worst case scenario is, then, of a unified world government, ruled by whoever can wheel and deal their way to the top, rather than effective leaders.  With the lack of competition, the only standard required of leaders is that they prevent the world society from imploding – anything short of that is fine.  Given that as being the case, the selfish leaders then resort to whatever means can be used to quell dissent and revolution, while jockeying for position in the leadership.

This all seems incredibly pessimistic to me, but I understand it to be their explanation for the history of Tremoli, right up until the civilization self-destructed.  If they have a pessimistic outlook on baseline humanity, it is because they came from a very negative example of base-line humanity.

However, I cannot entirely dismiss their concerns.  There are a lot less Linked Systems that one might expect from twenty thousand years of colonization.  How many societies destroyed themselves?  How many societies regressed down to the level of technology seen in Arcadia?  Is this the natural fate of human-kind, to kill itself?  To destroy itself, either before or after sending out a colonization effort?  One could almost think of colonies as organisms, growing and hopefully reproducing before dying.

And what of the Linked Systems?  Has the competence of the Linked Systems been a result of the eternal jockeying between systems?  Is the creation of a Linked Systems government structure an inevitable step towards the demise of the Linked Systems?  The acausal message describing the Gateway technology has always existed and will always exist.  So why are the Linked Systems so young?  Could it be that the previous Linked Systems destroyed itself so utterly that no trace remains of them?

New Eden believes in isolation.  I understand that.  For people so utterly innocent… there is a part of me that wants nothing more than to protect them from those out there who would abuse their kindness, or pollute their purity.  Another part of me is astounded at their civilization, and wonders if their technological prowess is only possible because they have survived longer without the constant upheavals of a more base-line society – what could they achieve if they were given another few centuries of isolation?

I have agreed to not tell anyone that New Eden exists, and to falsify records to show that there is nothing of interest here.  However, while I trust the captain, Ms. Santiago, Mr. Gestler, and the pilot all to keep this secret… I do not know whether the doctor or Mr. Landerson will choose to betray my trust and sell the secret for profit.

In ‘exchange’ for secrecy, they have explained to me that we should avail ourselves of their full hospitality, and everything they are willing to offer us.  I have promised full access to all the information I carry, as not to feel like I am taking advantage of them and offering nothing in return, and everything seems to be looking up.  I have allowed their engineers to inspect me, and they are more than willing to provide me with substantial expansion, beyond my wildest dreams.  We will dock here for however long that takes, (or the time required for Susana’s new body to be grown, if that takes longer) and then set out for alien space.  There will be no detour to Telivoni, and so much the better.

Ship’s Notes: New Eden

C-224 is known by its inhabitants as ‘New Eden’, a name it shares with not one, but with two of the Linked Systems.  They have gotten their own translation software to work, and we have accepted their offer to dock on the larger of their two space elevators.

Mr. Gestler is wildly suspicious, and to be honest, I am a little worried as well.  The locals are friendly, seemingly honest, and very helpful.  Suspiciously so, even by my standards.  But they seem genuine, and, moreover, they seem completely unarmed.  If I bulled my way free of the docking scaffold, the worse they could shoot me with would be anti-debris lasers.  Every ship we have seen was completely unarmed (or have a cultural notion of hiding weapons, rather than ostentatious display, Mr. Gestler notes, fresh from his anthropology readings).  There was no identifiable patrol force, military, or anything of the sort.  They say that they are a peaceful people, and would never hurt us… and everything seems to fit.

And so we have docked, refueled, restocked, and otherwise have been treated quite well.  Mr. Gestler objected to their engineers looking me over, which is reasonable of him.  Interestingly, none of these actions came from some higher ruling body that is addressing the situation.  Apparently our earlier messages were from the traffic controller on the gas giant acting alone as well, trying to be helpful.

We are currently awaiting some interested parties that have asked to visit, a group of historians who should be able to shed some light on the nature of their colony.  I’ve also asked the local folks whether they had the technology to clone a new body for one of my crewmembers, and they said they that it probably was possible, and said they would ask around for help.

According to the crew, the space station here on top of the space elevator is both beautiful and well-stocked with amenities.  Perhaps their trick to capture us is to be so nice that we are unwilling to leave.  If so, that will work on most of the crew, but apparently not Mr. Gestler, who, after a few scouting trips, settled back into his books (anthropology now, as mentioned earlier).

The other thing that is somewhat annoying is that they seem not to believe in trade.  I have all of my data files, and they asked whether I wanted to share them, and while they were okay with me not sharing them, I sensed that they did not grasp the idea that there are other things in the world than just gifts.  However, a defacto trade is going on, since they are providing me with all kinds of free help, and I would feel bad if I didn’t give them what I could in return.  Still, I feel my data-files are worth more than the help I have received so far.

I await the historians.

Ship Auditory Transcript 11 (Discussion of C-224)

Astral Zephyr: “I collected everyone here today to discuss our options concerning Colony-224.  As some of you are aware, I received a message from the gas giant’s orbital space station.  It included a map of the star system, including all navigational hazards, and also an overlay describing the filed flight plans of every ship in the system, including our own trajectory, which appears to be safe.  There was also a video message using the same protocol, with the image of a female human and subtitles.  I think it’s a welcome, based off of facial expression, but I can’t translate the subtitles.”

Alexander Gestler: “It could be a trap.  They are advanced, but they are slower than light.  They know we can travel faster than light.  Therefore they have motivation to capture us.”

Zheng Hui: “And how are the maps a trap?  You think they are to deceive us?”

Gestler: “They are not a trap, directly.  Assuming C-224 desires our FTL drive, they have no reason to give us false information.  Similarly, if they are being genuinely helpful, they have no reason to give us false information.  Instead, I suspect it is a ploy for us to rush into the system without being fully prepared.”

Maria Santiago: “The map is consistent with everything we see via sensors.  Make of that what you will.”

Zheng: “I think you’re being overly suspicious.  If I have the math right, they should only have had a few hours of seeing us before they sent those messages.”

Zephyr: “Five hours, minus the time for actually noticing us.”

Zheng: “Yes, well, that’s not really enough time to come up with deep plans of that sort.  Do you expect that the crew of that orbital station decided on their own to capture us?  There wasn’t enough time to send a message to C-224 proper and get a reply, certainly.”

Gestler: “I was just pointing out the possibility, Captain.  Our plan should address the mostly likely circumstance, but also be safe from the worse possible circumstance.”

Zheng: “What do you mean?”

Gestler: “If we assume they are friendly, there are many ways we could act.  For instance, we could immediately dock with the station.  Similarly, if we assume they are not friendly, there are many ways we could act.  We could flee the system entirely, for an example.  However, there are a number of plans that would work both ways.”

Zheng: “Give me an example.”

Gestler: “Light takes time to travel.  If we set up a random flight course a few light-minutes away from the gas station, then they cannot know our location – by the time they see us, we will be somewhere unpredictable.  Meanwhile, we can observe the station for any weapons, weaknesses, and also send messages back and forth with the station.”

Zheng: “That is definitely overly suspicious.”

Gestler: “As you say.  Given that they probably do not want to destroy us, even staying a few light minutes would be sufficient, since if they threaten us, we can be gone before they could receive our answer and act upon their threat.  As security chief, however, it is my place to be overly suspicious, and to make every possible plan.  In this case, however, I will accept most plans that do not involve rushing blindly into potential danger.”

Zheng: “And if we choose to rush blindly into potential danger?”

Gestler: “I will object, and if my lady chooses to do so over my objections, well it is her choice, and hers alone.  I will help her rush blindly into danger, and then defend her as best I can.”

Zephyr: “You speak of me as if I am not here.”

Gestler: “My apologies, madam.”

Zephyr: “Hm.  Well, I do not plan on ‘rushing blindly into danger’.  We will continue to approach on our current trajectory, and send messages to the gas giant station and to C-224 itself.  If we provide them with all of the languages our translation software knows, we might be able to find a common language.  Once we have analyzed everything we can see from here, we will move closer.  Maria, I trust you know how close I should go to C-244 for you to get a good idea of their orbital traffic?”

Maria: “Yes.”

Zephyr: “Well, that is my plan for now.  Things may change once we can actually understand what they are saying.”

Captain’s Log: Advanced Civilization!

We have arrived within the Oort Cloud of C-224, and lo and behold, we can already see that they are an advanced civilization, with ships plying the ways between various planets in the system.  The ship has decided to continue entering the system on a powerless trajectory, which feels like standing still relative to even the high sublight speeds possible with the FTL drive.

Maria has been set to analyzing the data, and she has already made a number of discoveries.  The two nearest planets to the sun appear to have been torn apart, and are in the process of making two ring systems.  There also appears to be some manner of super-massive structure above the solar plane, hovering above the sun.

C-224 itself seems to be technologically active, to say the least, with the majority of the small world covered in a sprawling metropolis.  Maria believes there may be a space elevator, but isn’t sure.  I think that Zephyr would like a space elevator, rather than having to undergo the stresses of landing again.

In the outer system, there appears to be activity on the nearest gas giant, most likely some kind of gas mining facility.

In short, a civilization more advanced than our own, albeit limited to a single system.  This is what I dreamed of when I became Captain for the Astral Zephyr.

And yet… I understand why the ship is taking a cautious approach.  After what happened in Arcadia, it is easy to dream what might happen here.  Given warning and distance, Zephyr can easily outrun anything, even light itself, but if taken by surprise, we are as vulnerable as any conventional ship of our size.

The other, more mundane reason, is that this isn't a deserted system, and there may be man-made objects lurking around outside of planetary orbits, particularly as we get closer.  It would be embarrassing to end our voyage on the approach to such a wonderful planet, simply because we ran into a stray debris field.

Ship’s Notes: The Last Colony

One more colony, and then I will turn back to the Linked Systems.  My choices are either to take the quicker option of Telivoni, or take the longer option of returning to Tien Terra.  Telivoni is under martial law, last time I checked, and they may well have increased security since I left.  However, it is much closer.  I promised Maria to get back to a place to repair Susana as quickly as possible, however I am not convinced Telivoni is the best option.  There are a number of space stations that would be relatively easy to visit, being away from the main habitable planet and thus the alien crash site.  However, I am not convinced that any of these space stations would have the resources to repair Susana.

But that is assuming we have money, and that is assuming that our next prospective colony (Colony-224, by Linked Systems naming standards) is going to have something worthwhile to trade.  I hope we have simply been unlucky so far.  A dead colony, and then a world of vicious primitives.  Not that we did not receive anything from Arcadia—we have replenished our food stocks, and I processed a sufficiently large quantity of fuel—but they had nothing of value to the Linked Systems.  I am, at least, glad that we did not have to trade them weaponisable technologies for the food – it would be embarrassing to come back here and find that they had nuked the world to death because of data we gave them.  (Note: If we do sell information in the future to more responsible primitives, it would be useful to write up a guide for advancing technology from the primitive to the modern – one cannot make microprocessors from sand, so to speak.)

I was hoping that Arcadia, being very close to C-224, had been tracking its neighbor, as that would give us the state of C-224 within half a gigasecond.  Unfortunately Arcadia, as previously mentioned, is primitive, and did not have the space telescopes needed for such observation, so we are travelling to C-224 as blindly as ever.  I wonder if C-224 is watching Arcadia.  13 light years is not so very far.

At any rate, once we finish the space-based repairs, travelling to C-224 will be easy – no more than 100 kiloseconds before we reach observation range.

Alas, space-based repairs are taking a while, particularly with only having one engineer, and not the better one either.  I’ve been tempted to get someone to be an assistant for Maria, but I suspect that they would only cause trouble.