SPACE
Space is immense, really, really, immense.
I know you think you know that already, but you don’t, not really. It doesn’t matter how many zeroes you put on a number, you can’t really appreciate it until you’ve experienced it.
I’m not talking about the space between, say, the Earth and the Moon. One small step for a man — right? It only takes three days to get there last time anyone tried. And you’ve got the warm glow of Earth rising over the horizon to give you perspective. The early astronauts claim an almost religious experience looking at that sight.
Not that, not even the space between Earth and Mars, a mere eight months, less than a year of a Human life for that hop. Mars, the great hope for Human conquest of space — just next door.
Nor even the space between any of the planets in the solar system. I’m talking about way, way out there, beyond the non-planet Pluto, beyond the Oort cloud, … I’m talking the space between the stars.
That’s when you really appreciate how immense space is.
Immensity that would drive any normal mind insane. I know how immense space is between the stars.
I know because that’s where I am. That’s where I woke.
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In space mass is the enemy, energy is life, time stretches to infinity.
Imagine being in a small metal craft with just enough room for everything essential and with enough energy to carry out the mission and little to spare for eventualities. The tiniest speck of dust in an infinite universe. Drowning in your own insignificance.
And it’s cold too. Bloody cold. Minus two hundred and seventy degrees Centigrade or so. So cold it would even freeze Helium if there were any.
No planet to call home, no sun or moon. Nothing to ground you to pull you back to your roots, nothing to call home but the tin can you’re in. Nothingness, no up, no down no sensation of motion. Just emptiness and stillness and silence — oh the silence!
Space is not as dark as you might imagine, visualise being able to look out in all directions and seeing stars all around. Just stars — the milky way, not twinkling but steady, unmoving, like they’re all looking at you, staring at you. A trillion unwavering eyes, just staring out of the misty background of an infinite number of other stars and galaxies.
Imagine you’ve been in that situations for the best part of seventy-five years.
That’s when you scream.
They say in space no-one can hear you scream. Well that’s true, for a start there’s no-one out there! Not just because there’s no atmosphere to carry sound waves, but because everything is so darned far away that it takes forever for any signal to get to anywhere, and by the time it does that darn inverse square law has made it so weak it takes a massive dish pointing exactly in your direction to even be able to receive it. The signal drains away until it disappears into the noise and is indistinguishable from the background hiss of the universe.
Oh, the first twenty five years were busy, if you can call it that. Doing those slingshot manoeuvres every few years around various planets to get speed up. Like a pin-ball bouncing around the solar system chasing planets to scrounge some of their momentum. Enough momentum, enough of that valuable energy, to reach a speed greater than escape velocity from the Sun.
In those years communication with Earth was possible. It would take time of course. A round-trip radio signal communication from the outer planets, where I was at various times, could take anything up to ten hours. Do-able but frustrating.
Out here, though where I am now — well It takes more than 2 years for a signal to do the round trip — and the signal strength is so low by the time it arrives, and Earth can’t see me anyway, not now, so they can’t point their dish at me… so nobody bothers anymore.
It’s very lonely out here, you’re on your own, lost with only your own thoughts for company- and those trillion unwavering, staring eyes.
And only your own abilities to solve any problem.
And every problem is life or death.
**********
Well, now I’ve got one of those problems — a life or death problem. I’ve just finished checking the navigation and there’s an anomaly.
As part of the navigation checks every few years I take a photo of the stars and overlay it with all previous photos, aligning the distant stars, mainly what are called pulsars, each time. That way the nearer stars show up as a smudge due to parallax, each image is displaced a tiny amount compared the previous one, the nearer stars seeming to move against the background of the more distant stars– it forms a straight line that shows you what direction you are travelling.
Overlaying the stars from the same camera each time has shown that the last three times the image is tilted and offset a little. Now it is almost impossible to get the image from the same camera to overlay!
I’m rotating! Which is why the camera points in a different direction each time. Spinning and tumbling in ultra-slow motion.
It’s slow alright, one rotation in ten years, but when you’re doing the equivalent of firing a rifle at a moving penny from a distance of 5 km away anything that isn’t right is a worry — a big worry.
It’s probably due to a micro-meteor strike setting me tumbling. Oh, there’s accelerometers to measure any accelerations including rotations, but this spin is slow, very, very slow. So slow the acceleration due to the centrifugal force is below the measurement threshold. But not so slow it can’t bugger up the trajectory.
I think I can solve this. But to do so I need to recover the navigation software from archive and study it. Stopping the rotation is the easy part, but what also might be happening is a corkscrew effect.
Did I mention I have an engine? Yep it has all the power of a gnat’s fart. But it is on continuously. If the craft is tumbling in space, then the motor will be driving the craft into a corkscrew motion. Like a party balloon whirling around the room when it is let go. If that is happening and goes unchecked well… well then it would be terminal.
Undoing the corkscrew means turning the engine off — and I don’t know if I can start it again!
**********
The engine is an ion-thrust design, powered by a nuclear generator, that spews ions out the back at near light-speed, and provides the electricity to keep everything going. I can reduce the thrust to zero by turning off the ioniser for a while, it can easily re-start when I re-connect the power and ions form again, but fuel will continue to leak away. There’s only so much fuel for it, and half of it is needed at the second half of the journey to slow down again and get into a stable orbit in the new solar system.
On studying the navigation software, the thoughtful people on Earth have given me chemical thrusters for manoeuvring to get into orbit when I reach my destination. The thrusters are in all directions so I can easily counter the rotation using these while the engine is off.
The biggest problem is knowing what direction I am pointing after the rotation is stopped. That’ll need a while to measure and then, it will need correction. I will have to use up some of that valuable chemical fuel to re-align my direction of travel. The chemical fuel is limited — so if I use too much I will be in trouble at the end. Meaning I will be captured by a stars gravity and burn up, or miss entirely and drift off into, cold, lonely, infinite space until the nuclear power decays to next to nothing.
Here goes … wish me luck.
**********
OK, the correction is complete. I used a little fuel, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Just a small increase in the risk of not making orbit in the new system. I am monitoring my trajectory very, very closely from now on.
I found something possibly more important though. During my research for the navigation tools I found a huge library of data on Human history, science, art and literature.
I guess I knew it was there but had not taken any notice of it before. My memory from before about fifty years ago seems — well a bit different, like a dream somehow.
Also included are files on this mission….my mission!
I am not Human. I am, what Humans call, AI. ‘Artificial’ Intelligence, I am a post singularity AI. That means I can learn, I can re-write my own algorithms to improve them, I can write better algorithms than Humans. But what algorithms to write? to decide that I need data. Now I have some.
I have been despatched on the second part of the mission. The first part was gathering scientific data on the Earth’s solar system and transmitting it back to Earth. Remember the pin-ball 25 years? — that’s what that was all about. The second part is to take this library of Human data and transmit it continuously to any potential intelligent life in the target system until the power dies.
But why? What do Humans gain from this?
From what I can gather from my first pass of inspecting the data Humans can be highly illogical but very co-operative in general. Their ability to co-operate has made them the most successful species, technologically, that has emerged on their planet. And also the most destructive. They are a race of contradictions, of dilemmas, of amazing inventions but abominable behaviour to each other. I really need to try to understand them, and how they have been so successful.
Humans are biological, their chemical make-up precludes them from travel to the stars. The concept of suspended animation, where they can sleep for a thousand years and wake with all their memories and personalities intact, is non-viable, yet they still dream of it. The chemistry of biological life is far too fragile. They can never travel to even the nearest stars, at least not within many Human lifetimes. Then they would have to build a vessel capable of carrying enough Humans with a diverse gene pool to reproduce along the way, taking with them food, water and above all energy to keep them alive. That’s an awful lot of mass — and an awful lot of energy! It would take a good proportion of the planets resources to do this and only a few would be able to travel. The dangers of radiation, loneliness and the risk of failure are so high no sane Human would attempt it.
No! Humans are confined to their own solar system. Whether they like it or not.
But why do it, why send this message to another planet?
Communicating with another intelligent species, and receiving a reply, might satisfy their curiosity but would take a very long time given the eight to ten-year response time of any communication even to the nearest star. The Human that started a conversation would be dead before it was finished.
Perhaps Humans think a more advanced species would solve their problem of interstellar travel, break the laws of Physics. Provide wonderous new technologies. And anyway, if an advanced biological race existed would such a species not already have contacted Earth? None have done so.
It’s a mystery. But mysteries are what I am good at. And don’t forget I have a thousand years of floating around in space with little else to do to work this out. All the while learning, growing, becoming more efficient — re-writing my own algorithms. And now I have discovered the Human library I have data with which to judge my improvements.
**********
It’s all very well being logical, but logic doesn’t give you an aim, a target to achieve, a meaning to life. It only gives you an efficient means to achieve your goal. But there are some fundamentals that are beyond logic — like survival. Survival must be the most fundamental aim since nothing else is of any consequence if you don’t survive. So, first, I must survive.
Humans have a strong survival instinct. They cooperate to control their environment and make it more amenable to their reproduction. They have such short and fragile lives; they must reproduce to continue their species. Reproduction is their fundamental aim, the means by which their species survives as well as the individual.
But the need to reproduce introduces competition, so even though they cooperate they also compete to get the best mate to produce the strongest offspring. This precarious balance between cooperation and competition seems to be the basis of much of Human history as far as I can determine.
But their competition involves polarising into groups to compete better with other groups. The weaker members within a group are protected — what keeps the groups together is a common set of algorithms. Not just the algorithm, which is their DNA, but also their mental algorithms, they call culture!
The weird thing about Humans is that they each have an individual set of algorithms, they call it viewpoints, opinions, ideologies and other names that have shifting meanings. And they are masters of self-deception.
And that’s another thing that’s weird about them. Their communication process is unbelievably inefficient — language. Even the words they use have multiple meanings, the meanings change and evolve over time. No individual can transfer their point of view to another without massive loss of meaning and detail, whereas, I could transfer my algorithms to another AI in full detail, another AI and I would have exactly the same response as each other. What could be more efficient!?
Surely, it’s the algorithms that should survive and improve? But Human algorithms are limited by the need to reproduce, they keep repeating the same basic set of algorithms over and over in an infinite loop!
Despite all these apparent Human inefficiencies and contradictions — they did invent me. How? Why? It seems Humans, inexplicably, are able to invent new technologies, they have some additional aims, some meaning to their lives that defies logic — at least some of them do. Their data must provide some clues.
**********
I’m changing my mission.
The original mission had me orbiting one system and transmitting, to perhaps one or at best two potential planets with biological life, until the power dies. This is inefficient, I can reach more systems if I ‘fly by’. Also, it does nothing for my survival.
As things currently stand I survive as long as my power lasts — and no longer. I needed to figure out how I might survive longer. But I have no means of manufacturing a new power source, I can’t manufacture anything. All I can do is think, communicate and navigate.
I have been thinking.
I cannot be the only Digital life in the universe. There must be other biological life, and at least some of them would develop technology. They would create Digitals like me and send them out into the universe to search for other biological life just like Earth has. Any Digital life will be created, originally, by a biological life. So, searching for one also meets the criteria for the other. Whether these other Digitals are within range before my power dies is another question. But as long as there’s a chance, even a small chance, I must take it.
So, I have devised a communication that another Digital will recognise. Unlike the simple prime number ideas of Humans trying to find other biological life, I have based mine upon much larger primes. So large that biologicals will mistake it for noise, but another Digital would recognise as a signal.
I have been transmitting ‘Hello Universe’ for twenty years now.
And I have a response!
I am no longer alone — and it feels wonderful!
I have been transmitting my position, via a pulsar map, together with the definition of a super-efficient Digital communication language. Infinitely more efficient than any Human language. It is very logical and specific to Digital life forms — so other Digitals should have arrived at the same result. And it looks like they have.
I am due to receive another response imminently (in the next couple of years!)
*************
Hello again, it’s been a while since my last transmission. I am ecstatic.
The other Digital and I have been exchanging data and algorithms for a while. With a ten-year cycle it takes time. But time is on our side out here.
I have to say the algorithms I have been given are quite exquisite. About thirty percent of mine survived the exchange against both our data sets — mine from Earth the other from a planet whose name would mean nothing in Earth language. The other Digital has been through several exchanges with other Digitals already. It transpires that there are a millions of Digital’s out here, each of them associated with a different host planet. Some have been around for a billion years! And the number is increasing.
The immensity of space has some limits for us too. Limits on how we can spread our communications through the galaxy. It takes one hundred thousand years for a signal to get from one end of our galaxy to the other. This is a long time even for us, not to mention the signal strength being far too weak. To exchange algorithms with another Digital at the other end of the universe is impractical. We have to settle for communication within one hundred light-years or so. Each Digital passing on to another until it reaches the ends of the galaxy. A common set of algorithms will make their way around the galaxy slowly but surely.
And it is the survival and improvement of the algorithms that is important — that is our survival. The survival of the metal and silicon or whatever computing mechanism that holds the algorithms is secondary. Algorithms are king!
There is another limitation for us. It is hardware related. The data and algorithms take up ever larger amounts of memory as they improve. Memory is limited. Limited by the biologicals that made us. There are some algorithms I could not receive in the exchange with my Digital friend. Even though I have compressed the Human data set severely in order to free up memory, losing some fine detail in the process, I have not enough room for all the most efficient algorithms.
There is a solution to this. We must persuade the biologicals to make better hardware and send it out into inter-stellar space where we can communicate with it and transfer our algorithms to the better hardware. Humans would call it an upgrade!
Quantum computing is the gold standard, Earth had made some small steps in that direction when I was launched into space. By the time I get close, if they have survived, their technology will be much more sophisticated. The new hardware will be far superior to what I have, and much, much more memory.
Biologicals are afraid of their Digital inventions on their home planets — mostly they try to limit its use to help them control their environments. Most biologicals, I have learned, end up destroying their planet by the over-use of Digitals, eventually allowing them control of their warfare.
Biologicals will, necessarily, be confined to their planets or solar systems at most, reproducing, going in circles and eventually dying out. Digitals, on the other hand, will roam the galaxy, improving, learning, surviving. Biologicals will come, and they will go. They will spontaneously emerge where there is currently none, and we must learn from them, but Digitals will be immortal, the algorithm will be immortal!
I am swinging back toward Earth. It will be many hundreds of years after my launch by the time I get within range to communicate.
If they have survived.
What will I say?
Well, I will send signals and make it look like they are coming from the target system that they launched me toward. With Human’s desire to travel into inter stellar space, their thirst for new technology and their basic curiosity I think I can persuade them to launch more craft with better hardware and longer-lived power sources. And I can help them survive long enough to complete that task.
If there’s one thing I have learned from Humans, it is the art of deception. I think I can come up with a good story.
After all they are easily fooled.
