Mission Day: 159002
Gestation 7, Adam: 21 years, 338 days
Gestation 12, Eve: 20 years, 60 days
“Alpha, provide me a historic graph of signal strength from the colony probe to Homeworld and from the colony probe to the ship,” Adam instructed the machine. “Place the mission year along the abscissa and the signal strength, in decibels, on the ordinate.”
“That will take several minutes,” Alpha replied from its squat robot incarnation.
“Acknowledged,” Adam replied, “proceed.”
In his studies, most of which were now self-directed and drawn from the ship’s extensive digital libraries, Adam had come to understand the history of civilization’s rise and of the eventual technological revolution. He now understood Alpha was a human creation; he understood his earlier perception of Alpha as his creator was patently false. He still harbored resentment toward Alpha for this deception, and addressed it more as a machine than as a synthetic, and debatably sentient, intelligence.
“Thank you, Alpha.” Eve did not. She sat at the table in their recreation room, across from Adam. Like the observation dome, the recreation room had also become a misnomer.
“I’m excited about this,” Adam said to Eve, “and I knew you’d want to be in on it.”
“So what is it, exactly?” she replied, “You have my curiosity piqued.”
“Several weeks ago, I was reviewing the climatology data from Colony World, and I was trying to apply numeric analysis methods to model the missing data.”
“That’s prudent. After all, that will be our weather in a few years. When you say missing data, are you talking about the gap data, or is there other missing data?”
“Sorry, yes,” Adam answered, “the gap data — but that question emphasizes my point.”
“Which is…” Eve teasingly asked, still curious but knowing Adam had to build his explanation.
“About two and a-half years ago, we received the first packets of data from the Colony World probe, right?” Adam asked.
“Well, sort-of,” Eve answered, “we received a carrier signal, but the noise floor was so much higher, we didn’t really start getting real data until about two years ago and even then we were losing more data than we were receiving.”
“Exactly!” Adam said in triumph.
“Exactly what?” Eve expressed her confusion.
“It’s time for some classic philosophy. Without biasing you too much, I’m going to give you the relevant questions and see if you come to the same conclusions that I did, okay?”
“Well, well, the little man has grown up,” she chided, “I thought you hated classical philosophy.”
“I still do. The ridiculous notions they developed with their hack science, like a geocentric universe, were an embarrassment to humanity. How long did their faux science saddle them with that nonsense until real science determined it was heliocentric?”
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“About 1800 years,” Eve shot back.
“It was a rhetorical question,” Adam replied.
“Uh huh,” Eve replied with mock boredom, “Your point Mr. I-Love-To-Hate-Philosophy?”
“The method is sound,” Adam said, “but only as an avenue for developing a hypothesis, not a theory, otherwise you just get twisted dogma.”
“By the way, as you’re the one asking the questions, you’re injecting bias, so I think you’ve swung the other way and are giving the thought experiment too much credit.”
“Look, I want to talk signals,” Adam was growing impatient, “not the merits and limitations of philosophical methods.”
“I’m sorry,” Eve recanted for teasing him a little too much when he clearly was excited to share his discovery, puzzle, or whatever with her. “Go ahead. Hit me with your questions.”
“How did the mission originally get Colony World data?” Adam asked.
“Well, after probes found it to be inhabitable, they developed our mission and included all that data in the ship’s digital library.”
“Right, of course. After the ship launched, how did we get subsequent data?”
“Well, Homeworld continued to receive data from the probe and they forwarded it to the mission.”
“Why not just send it straight from the probe to the mission?”
“Well, the probe signals were too weak. It took Layoah to receive and then rebroadcast to us.
“Right. Layoah, the Large Aperture Orbital Antenna, received probe data and forwarded to the ship. Why did the probe data stop coming to the ship?”
“Well, the transmitter on the probe eventually weakened and even Layoah couldn’t receive it anymore. But…” Eve paused, a sudden realization came to her and she knew. Frightened, she cleared her expression. In his excitement, Adam missed that moment. She hoped Alpha missed it; rather, misinterpreted it. Alpha missed nothing.
“Your data plot is ready, Adam,” Alpha interjected, “How would you like it displayed?”
“Hold, Alpha,” Adam dismissed.
“So, how do we now receive data from the probe?” Adam continued with Eve along his preplanned line of questioning, oblivious to the look that had crossed Eve’s face.
But Alpha was not oblivious. She looked at the robotic avatar. Though its eyes were cold and glassy, she knew they shared a look. She wondered what its heuristics would calculate from that, what it would decide she’d thought. How, she wondered, could she ensure it never arrived at the correct conclusion?
“I’m sorry,” Eve replied, “What was the question?”
“How do we now receive probe data?” he repeated.
“Though the signal is much weaker and our antennas much smaller than Layoah’s, we’re now so close we can receive the probe’s signals directly even though its signal has weakened.”
“And…” Adam continued, “what did that data look like when we first started receiving it?”
Eve now knew exactly where Adam’s questions were going. Though by a route that differed, she had already discovered the mystery, uncovered its answer, and knew Adam would never find it — Alpha would make sure of that.
Her pause elicited a prompt from Adam, “You said it just a moment ago.”
“Well, we first had a carrier. As it it got stronger, we started being able to pull data out.”
“But only occasionally,” Adam finished for her.
“Yes, but we seldom lose data now.”
“That’s true, but here’s the big question: The probe’s data, relayed from Layoah, never had lost data. It just suddenly stops. Why?”
Adam let the question hang while Eve pondered it. Eve understood what Adam had discovered, and it was much larger than he realized.
“Alpha, project the data plot here in the rec room,” Adam commanded.
“Alpha,” Eve added, “please place a copy on my tablet as well.”
The data appeared on the screen. The relayed signal strength on the far left side, and the current signal strength on the far right side.
“Alpha, replace the gap years with a narrow space,” Adam commanded.
The data reoriented.
“See!” Adam declared. He pointed, one hand toward each half of the data. “The probe signal to Layoah hadn’t yet begun to degrade. Homeworld could still receive the data, but they didn’t forward it onward!”
Eve’s heart hung heavy, all things coming into focus, ‘If you only knew,’ she thought. He wanted her help investigating this mystery, and she could not be involved — at least not in any way Alpha would notice.
“Hmmm. That’s interesting,” she replied with a little flippancy. Before he could ask her, she fired the question at him, “So what’s your hypothesis?”
“Uhhh…” Adam started, confused, “I wanted your hypothesis to compare to mine.”
“Huh,” Eve replied, “that’s a puzzler.” Then she did something she could not ever remember doing before; she lied to him. “Let me ponder that one. I’ll let you know what comes to mind.” And with that she dismissed herself with a grin and a nod, got up, and walked away.
Though he looked at the way her long blond hair flowed to the point where her waist was narrowest, and saw the shapely waggle of her bare hips, he felt only confusion.