CHAPTER 38
ATLAS
STARNET 2.0
Atlas was enjoying himself. It was the sense of purpose he gained from toiling away on projects that others needed.
He stood, overlooking another megaproject in the Tac system. This time it was the construction of a massive Death Star–looking object. Atlas considered it as he stared out the window. Maybe Death Star was the wrong description. But it did look like a large moon. It was bigger than any of the moons in the system—even before all of them had been cannibalized for material.
It was made up of millions of honeycomb-shaped probes all interconnected like a jigsaw.
The hexagon-shaped probes were similar particle accelerators to the ones that made up the Starnet. But instead of only one, there were a lot of them all arranged in a circle, designed to fire two particles toward the middle of the giant orb.
Atlas rubbed the ridge of his nose thinking about all the complicated math he’d had to do to make this all work. He had unlimited resources, which was a positive, but still had to think through the problem carefully.
The current design of the Starnet constantly broadcast a steady stream of entangled particles.
If he wanted to speak with Trillion in real time, one pair of the particles would travel across the galaxy to where Trillion was while the other was bounced between two pieces of glass.
Atlas had discovered some time ago that when two particles were entangled away from a large gravitational body, doing something to one of the particles would have an impact on the other. Scientists on a planet would never be able to discover this unique quirk of quantum mechanics because all their tests were in the presence of the gravity produced by a planet.
The easiest way to build a Starnet that didn’t require a constant torrent of particles traveling between the stars would be to bounce both sets of particles between mirrors.
He could set up the Starnet and have it produce entangled particles for several years, then send one half of the particles that were bouncing between mirrors to Trillion in one package.
The problem with that was he didn’t want to have to wait several years to create enough particles. He wanted to do it quickly.
And so he had designed this particular arrangement of particle accelerators. Every second of operation, these machines would fire a year’s worth of entangled particles. That meant, after just one hour of running, enough particles would’ve been produced to run the Starnet for almost four thousand years.
Each of the particle accelerators fired two entangled particles toward the center of the spherical moon-shaped megastructure. Again, he needed a solution for managing the fire hydrant of particles.
Atlas chose to use a modification on Angelique’s stealthfield bubble technology.
He worked out that with a small modification of the way it worked, he could stop the stealthfield from destroying entanglement and still enable it to slow down the speed of light for every particle that entered that region of space.
Basically, he used the stealthfield to guide trillions of pairs of entangled particles toward two separate storage units.
One of the storage units could be kept with him, the other sent to the other side of the galaxy.
Then things would operate much like the current design of the Starnet.
Atlas flicked off a quick message to Trillion. She wanted to be there when he first switched on.
The moonlike structure would produce a lot of wasted heat when turned on.
Trillion teleported in holding a wine glass. “I’ve been looking forward to this light show. Angelique is too busy visiting Icarus’s world; otherwise she would have joined, too.”
Atlas put glasses over his eyes. “You ready?”
Trillion nodded, and Atlas pressed the giant red button in front of him.
The giant moon made up of millions of interconnected hexagons began to glow slightly. Then it got brighter and brighter. Atlas had to actively shield his eyes from it.
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He could feel the heat radiating off it, too.
Trillion looked at him as if to ask, Is that normal?
Answering Trillion’s question, the machine shut down with an audible grinding sound.
“Hmm.” Atlas ran over to his computer to check on the results. “It overheated. I need a bigger heat sink.” He shuffled through the pages of information. “It worked though; it produced enough entangled particles to run the Starnet for at least five years.”
“Nice. At least you know it works.” Trillion raised her glass in a toast. “Could you use that as a weapon? I heard Pete asked you to build something that could destroy a planet.”
Atlas considered it for a moment. Maybe if he wanted to sterilize a planet, firing a bunch of high-energy particles would be effective. But it would be quite invisible. “Peter wants something a bit showy. He wants something with destructive power but also something that leaves a visible sign.”
“What’s scarier than a glowing moon that shoots laser beams?”
Atlas nodded slightly. “The glow is scary. But most of the particles it shoots are invisible. And most of the destruction would be invisible. It would be terrible for human life though. If you shot this at Earth, it would cause a mass extinction event.”
Atlas wanted to change the topic. He wasn’t that comfortable designing a weapon, even if it was a deterrent. He’d been distracting himself a little, not wanting to put much effort into building something that could wipe out an alien race.
He took this as his chance to bring up a topic he had been wanting to discuss for a while. He was becoming a little concerned that Trillion was spending a lot of time hallucinating. But he wasn’t sure exactly how to bring it up. “Are you still meditating in that cloud?”
Trillion believed there was an alien in that cloud. She believed she was communicating with it when she entered it. Atlas wasn’t so sure. He’d joined her and entered the cloud, spreading his consciousness across many micro-ANTs. It didn’t work. He’d left feeling extremely relaxed, having solved an equation he was trying to figure out. But he never got a sense that he was speaking to an alien. He never got a sense that there was an alien in the cloud.
He’d tried to go into it with an open mind. But afterward, he was convinced it was just a dream. He found himself imagining a lot of different things while meditating.
Trillion finished her glass of wine, then manifested a bottle to top it up. She poured herself a glass and dropped the wine bottle down a portal. “I know you don’t believe I’m speaking to anyone in there. But I enjoy it. It’s relaxing.”
Atlas had a sneaking suspicion Trillion was lost. She was lacking a purpose. She was using the cloud as a distraction. But he couldn’t just tell her that. She needed to discover it for herself.
He considered what to say next. He thought about asking her to help him. But he knew she wasn’t that interested in the technical things that got him excited. Even though she didn’t have the behavioral modification in her matrix driving her to build a colony, he knew that was something she wanted to do most of all. She was happiest when she was helping the children on his planet grow up. “How are your other colonies going? I know you’ve sent out thousands of probes to other star systems.”
“I’ve had about a hundred planets come online. I’m waiting until I have a few more before I select which one to go visit.”
Atlas thought a hundred planets was a lot, way more than any of them had had to choose from. “How many planets do you want to compare between?”
“I want to get this right. I’m thinking I’ll pick the best planet once I’ve had a chance to visit a couple thousand.”
Atlas understood Trillion’s conservative nature. Out of all the explorers, she had had the worst luck. She’d destroyed her first planet and gotten trapped on a moon on her second. Now she was worried about terraforming the system she was in because she believed the clouds were sentient. She was overcompensating for some of her past mistakes.
Again, Atlas didn’t want to tell her that. He also didn’t want to push her toward something she wasn’t quite ready for.
Then it occurred to Atlas that he could help her speed up the process. She didn’t need to go out and wait for her probes to visit every planet when he could take a photo of them using the telescope he’d built. “What if I could scan all the planets your probes are still traveling toward? I could scan them all and tell you which is statistically the most likely to be the best.”
Trillion considered that for a moment. “Could you find me something similar to your planet? Something I can terraform easily?”
Atlas nodded. “I could help you get there faster than the probes too. Since Angelique’s design for a spacecraft can travel at near light speed, you could probably reach some of the planets before your probes do.”
Atlas watched as Trillion’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
“I think so.” Atlas thought about how he might do it. He didn’t want to lead Trillion on. He didn’t want to give her false hope. “Between all of us, we’ve visited enough planets to know which planets are ideal for terraforming. Angelique’s people have quite a lot of data on differentiating between good and bad planets. It wouldn’t take much effort to build an algorithm to find your something close that is easy to terraform.” Then Atlas added because he knew it was an important point for Trillion, “A system with no life on it.”
“It’s important there isn’t even a remote chance of having life on it.”
Atlas’s mind began to work. Doing this would slow down his process of hunting for planets the Atua were on. But this was important. He wanted to make sure Trillion was happy. “I’m confident I can speed up your process.” Then he smiled. “Let’s see if we can get you more planets than Angelique.”
Trillion smiled. “I can finally live up to my name and get that many planets.”
Atlas almost said something then. The idea that she was living up to her name. She had a trillion resources in the Tac system. She had more resources than anyone else already. But then he kept his mouth shut.
Trillion left Atlas, and he got back to work figuring how to absorb all the additional heat generated by running the machine he’d constructed. It would be easy on a planet, but he needed to be away from a large gravitational body. Once again, he began tinkering with his designs.