It wasn’t long before the team had built up a three-dimensional map of the alien ship.
Peter was proud of Atlas, his oldest and closest friend in the room. He’d missed seeing him in action, inventing and coming up with creative solutions. It was an ingenious idea to use the ANTs to take multiple scans of the alien ship—using the background radiation of the star system as if it were an X-ray machine, then stitching together all the various datapoints. Peter clapped as he commended Atlas and Ariana.
Peter studied the map. It reminded him a lot of dungeon or boss maps in the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, essentially a greyscale view of the megastructure. The aliens’ ship was made up of four spherical objects. They were stacked three on the bottom and one on the top in a pyramid shape. From the outside, all four of the large round structures looked very similar. But once they could see inside of the massive bulbous objects, it became clear that three of them were engines, and only one of them had spaces for aliens to travel.
The area of the ship where there was specific space for life to move was full of a network of passageways and rooms. There was also a dark zone where either a large body of water or thick metal plating was. And there was a section in the very center of the ship that was completely blacked out, as if no photons of light made it through that region.
The team could look at the map, zooming in and out of sections. “Atlas, I’m impressed. I didn’t expect it to be this detailed. This is almost as if we have the blueprints for this ship now. We can see where everything is.”
Atlas went a little red with embarrassment. “You can thank Ariana for that. Her additional brain matrices crunched the data better than I thought possible.”
Peter was glad Atlas had used Ariana for that part of the process. He knew Atlas was prone to trying to do everything himself, so he was particularly proud of his old friend for using others’ strengths.
“I don’t understand how you built a map that was so accurate,” Hezekiah said. “I was expecting many 2D slices, or something more primitive. Not this masterpiece.”
“Back before we were simulations, did you ever see a lidar scanner in action?”
“Like the ones real estate agents used to use to give you a virtual tour of a house online?”
“Exactly. Lidar works by shooting out a bunch of pulses of light and measuring the time it takes for the light to come back. And by a bunch I mean millions of tiny pulses per second.” Atlas pointed up at the display he and Ariana had created. “This works on much the same principal. But instead of sending out pulses of light, we’re measuring how much light makes it through that structure. And if we combine that with the direction that light particle traveled, then we can combine that information to produce a similar effect. Only, in this case, we don’t have to provide the light pulses, as all the stars around us provide that.”
Not to be outdone, Ariana joined in with a bit of context: “We can also understand, to a degree, what kinds of material we are passing through. Neutrinos, for example, are particles that shoot through space and don’t really interact with anything. There are billions of them flying through each of us every second. Even the Dottiens’ planet.” She pointed out the window toward one of the bigger stars in the sky that must have been a planet. “The majority of neutrinos will pass right through that planet without even coming in contact with anything. So whenever we notice a slight drop in the number of neutrinos, then we know there’s something dense in that region of space. We took measurements across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. We also measured for other particles like neutrinos. That’s how we were able to build up such a comprehensive picture.” She changed the color of the map to a dark blue. Most of it disappeared, except for five areas on the map that were solid blue. “Here are areas on the ship I’m extremely confused about. They have some of the best shielding I’ve ever seen. Not much is getting through these. And I want to understand how they’re doing this.”
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Peter found it all intellectually stimulating, but he wanted the team to focus. They need to rescue the other versions of themselves; the science lesson on how it all worked could come later. “So do we know where our clones are?”
Atlas zoomed in on a section of the map. It was a small room near the very center of the alien ship. “This looks like an eleph-ANT to me. I think this might be where the team is.”
“But then how do they get that far into the ship?” Angelique asked.
Atlas moved the map around a little, taking them to a wall that looked to be carved out. “This section here looks like it’s been damaged using the tractor beam. These are not doors being opened. These are door being ripped apart.”
“I agree with his assessment,” Ariana said. “This is where they are. But I don’t quite understand how they got there; there’s no obvious path between where they are right now and an outside air lock chamber.”
Atlas bit his lower lip. “I can answer that. I believe the air lock chambers are connected to elevator shafts. So when they came in, they were moved to the center of the ship.”
“Interesting,” Ariana said. “That would explain why they’re moving around aimlessly blowing holes through the wall.”
Peter finished studying the map. He wasn’t going to add much value simply looking at the display. He needed to direct the team toward a plan. He noticed Angelique thinking the same, and he thought she was doing a good job at leading this expedition. So he nodded at her to speak first.
“How do we get to them?”
“Ariana and I can map us a path,” Atlas said. “But I think we’ll have to send one of the AIs in an eleph-ANT to go and tunnel our way in. This spaceship we’re in is too big.”
Peter watched as, on the 3D map in front of him, a dotted line appeared through a random section of the hull of the alien’s ship. Then it intersected with a passageway in front of where the others were moving toward.
Ariana explained the pathway she suggested: “That dotted line is a wall we need to dig through. I’m suggesting we cut through into this room.” She pointed at a room that she highlighted on the map. “That way they’ll come toward us, and we can meet up with them there. This is the fastest, most optimal way to reach them.”
Peter considered it for a second. He wasn’t sure how the weapon worked for cutting holes through ships. But he worried that if was loud enough, then it might cause their clones to change directions. Or even prepare for an attack. He didn’t know what mindset they were in, but jumping out in front of them might not be the best idea. Especially if they knew they were in a prison. “Can I make a suggestion? Let’s enter from where they came. That way we can retrace their steps—through the holes they already made. It will be less threatening that way.” Peter scratched his chin thinking about it. “We can also check for the microglitter Atlas mentioned. We’ll be able to confirm it’s actually them.”
“Good idea,” Angelique said. “Now who’s going? I don’t think we all go.”
“I’ll go,” the Ship of Angelique suggested. “I know how the tractor beam works best.”
Angelique shook her head. “We need you controlling this spacecraft.” She looked at the Ship of Atlas. “You go; you know the weapon, and you’ll be able to move just as quickly while controlling the eleph-ANT.