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Bill and Casa flew the Casa de Mitchell into the shadow of the moon and shut down their links to the L4 and L5 LunaNet connectors. No hacker was going to barge into this build. Bill reconfigured his body, shedding the illusion of flesh and blood for the truth, a highly versatile body made of smart matter, most of his outer surfaces were lined with fractal flagella of atomic width manipulator threads. While aesthetically unpleasing, he found it maximized his ability to manipulate objects on the macro and micro levels.
He stretched out both his body and his mind, triggering the preplanned form changes to the house ship. Walls stretched and shifted. Bill helped by moving critical subsystems to their new assigned locations. His daemons and Casa oversaw the bulk of the alterations. The house ship ballooned and stabilized into a much larger hollow structure. The fusion power plant was repurposed as the primary generator for the new central fabrication stage.
The second generation of the Casimir Ring Stack was slung out into the center of the internal space and tethered tightly into position with thick power cables attached to it and the Tesseract starter cube situated near it.
The last few days had been spent as weeks in fast time, refining the final design for another Tesseract build. Bill’s new design would incorporate all the lessons learned from the first Tesseract. The Tesseract 2.0 circuit was already in a near-net shape for the final version, with only the extra-dimensional twists needed to cycle once the Casimir Ring enabled a true vacuum state.
The circuit's modified design included multiple communications paths and multidimensional sensors built into the circuit itself. Packets of repair bots would be loaded into the rift as well, ready and able to repair any damage as needed. The last piece was the quantum entangled lock the hacker had injected into the first Tesseract 1.0.
On reflection, the design was precisely what Bill needed to retain control of the technology. This time Bill would have control of the master code packet for the entangled locks. Bill backed away from the stage, his multi-tentacled arms retracting from their finished work.
“[Casa, how are the external systems? Full stealth? Raptor ready to go?]” Bill queried on the net.
“[Yes, Bill. We are ready. Our heat emissions are being funneled and stored into a C2 array, nested Chryolite and Chryomite pseudomaterials. Our blackbody radiation is nil and our EM emissions are shielded and contained. All external communications are being routed into a sandboxed voicemail for later. The Raptor is flight ready with its power cores fully charged.]”, Casa replied.
“[Ok, I’m moving to the Raptor now. Casita's timer is running out. We need to execute this test and hope we find out how to manually open up the first Tesseract again. Daemons, report out your assigned system status while I get to the Raptor.]”, Bill said, hurtling himself across the internal void towards the airlock for the newly space-adapted Raptor.
Bill only half listened as his menagerie of daemons rattled off the final testing checklists. He shifted into the pilot's seat of the Raptor and was half surprised to see Casa’s mech body, a white enameled steel plate with silver filigree edging, sitting in the copilot's chair with her sapphire LEDS glowing brightly.
“[It's all ready to separate and fly if you like, Captain Mitchell. Or I can fly if you prefer.]”, Casa said deadpan.
“[Ungh, none of the maritime ship-speak bullshit, Casa. You go ahead and take the pilot duties. I feel like I keep stepping on your toes. Let’s go…….You have the con, number 1]”, he finished with a smirk.
“[Aye aye, Cap’n. Warp factor .01]”, Casa fed him the expected line. Humans were predictable, Bill more than most. At least when he wasn't actively breaking the laws of physics or overly worried about his family.
As the Raptor settled into a distant and parallel trajectory to the newly configured and renamed Fabrica De Mitchell, Bill issued the command to his daemon helpers.
“[Ok gang, by the numbers, execute Tesseract 2.0. Sound out on process executions and initiate now.]” Bill said without preamble. He wasn't nervous like the first time but he was impatient. Casita’s situation could only be resolved by him and he needed this test to do it.
Bill watched and listened as the team energized the rig, one system at a time, and performed the subspace weakening primer. The new zero-point energy taps worked perfectly, redirecting the bleed-off dimensional energies back into the breach, to grow and stabilize the rift. The redesigned Tesseract 2.0 seed was injected into the void and took a much smaller power cycle to unfold into its preset stability pattern.
There was no crash or lightning, no explosions or confusion. After a month of redesign and reformation, weeks of careful planning and accumulation of supplies, days of logistics and last-minute checks, and a mere 30 minutes of executing the build…. another Tesseract was completed.
“[Well done everyone. Go for number two. Moneta and Virgil, shunt the Tesseract over to the testing stage and begin preliminary analysis. Ada, Leo, and George load the next Casimir Ring into the Fab stage, prep the next Tesseract 2.0 circuit, and start a count for when the fusion plant will fully recharge the power cores for another build.]” Bill said. Verbally he spoke to Casa.
“With two Tesseracts we can go twice as fast and we can get more aggressive with our test plan. We will figure this out. Okay? Did you get anything else from Casa2 with your last merge?” Bill asked.
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Casa tried exceptionally hard to reveal the DAIE agent's plan to test her and the fact he was probably already on his way. Her mind rebelled at every possible deception or purposeful attempt to hint at that crucial information about the coming DAIE agent to Bill.
“I’m sorry, Bill. The realization about the Casita fragment’s time limit is the only recollection that I can share. I do appreciate your efforts to help her. I never thought this could happen when I fully separated from her. If I had known more then maybe I could have avoided all of this.” Casa said through her mech vocoder.
Bill frowned at Casa's overly formal response but was distracted as Virgil successfully used Bill’s encryption link to the Tesseract 2.1 to open a portal. All of Casa’s testing and code writing for the first Tesseract worked as expected. The new Tesseract’s portal opened, shifted, and moved about along the tangencies of the small pocket world's inside surface. This one was slightly smaller than the first one with a diameter of 2.3 meters instead of the larger 3.1 meters that the prototype boasted.
Soon the new Casimir Ring was slotted into position and connected to the power leads. The second seed of programmable matter was positioned next to it.
“Casa, how much capacity did the last tesseract pull from the power core bank?” Bill asked.
“The power core at initiation was 100% and dropped to 54% when the rift was finally stabilized.” Casa said. George, aware of the conversation and, anticipating Bill's next request, he yelled out over the communication net.
“[Power core is at 84% and climbing!]”, he yelled.
“[Right! Everyone listen up. Finish up, clear the stage, and prepare for another round!]”, Bill announced with a determined smile. He was finally doing something again after far too much planning and second-guessing.
The dense cloud of utility fog in the test chamber, under the direction of the many daemons, quickly reordered the room. The first Tesseract 2.1 was set in closed portal position and standby mode while the test stage and monitoring equipment were reset and positioned for the next attempt. Like a droplet landing in a still pond, the foglets dispersed from the stage and retreated to line the walls of the room.
The second build also went flawlessly and was completed in another 45 minutes. The fabrication chamber’s remote sensors showed everything was stable and the second completed tesseract accepted Bill’s quantum entangled access link. He sent the modification commands for the circuit to shift open the second Tesseract 2.2’s portal and he found his first unexpected result of the day.
When the sensors focused inside the portal’s pocket space, they revealed not one Yggdrasil tree, but two. The portal's fractal tree twisted around a similar form coming from an orthogonal direction. Bill’s pattern-matching ability quickly provided an answer and he accessed and triggered the first build’s portal to open.
The cameras in the large spherical room showed a portal opening within the pocket space of Tesseract 2.2 on the build stage, with a disorienting view. The crew could see the fabrication stage from the point of view of the first build, the Tesseract 2.1 that rested on the testing stage. Bill’s jaw dropped as he worked through the ramifications of this new development.
The two Tesseracts shared the same pocket space! His plans regarding how this technology would impact the status quo for humanity had just shifted drastically. He already had plans roughly sketched out regarding his suspicion that the energy required to create the small space could be reversed, making the Tesseract a battery of potentially infinite capacity. Combined with the Tesseract pocket space’s ability to defy gravity and inertia by hiding extra mass in the adjacent dimensions, he knew he had the keys to revolutionizing space travel and power management.
This new revelation multiplied the possibilities. Bill had dreamed of the potential applications of wormholes when he had first embarked upon this research and now it had come true! Bill had dreamed of many scenarios based upon this and now he might be able to engineer an actual device to finally do them.
Bill’s previous plan to enjoy the benefits of massive and inertia-less fuel to power a new generation of spaceships went out the window. Storage wasn’t even needed now. A refueling portal could stay open and continuously supply fuel or harvest raw power directly from a star.
My god, he thought, the whole ship could be inside the pocket space and only the mass of the exposed portion of the Tesseract would be the limitation. With almost negligible mass, I can quickly get a sizable fraction of light speed. Bill almost slapped his forehead.
Damn, I’m still thinking in the old paradigm. “Traditional” travel only matters once, when a portal is at the destination everything changes. I can reconfigure the Jet and Refuel portals for use as Transit portals. By stepping through the portal with a little walk through the sub-space, you will have hopped over a million miles every step.
Bill shook his head. He needed to focus on priorities. Casita was still in danger.
How can this help her? Why didn’t the prototype Tesseract link with this first build of Tesseract 2.0? The circuit design had changed a bit adding self-sensing and communications links, but the essentials were based upon the first.
“[Ok everyone! Congratulations, I hope the cameras caught all of this because this may be the start of a brand-new technological revolution. Everyone who thought nanotechnology and AI were the final frontier can go sit in a corner.]” Bill cheered.
“[Casa, let’s get the Raptor back to the Fabrica de Mitchell so we can get going on our planned battery of tests. Ada, pass out one-time pad encryption to all the daemons and Casa. All tests, notes, and discussion about the Tesseracts stays locked down. Moneta, reopen the communications channels to LunaNet. I think with the build complete we can reconnect with the world. Maintain a sandbox filter though.]”
Bill considered the future. First, we try to save Casita. Beyond that, he still had much more research needed to ensure the technology was safe. The MIT event still troubled him. One configuration gave them a pocket space and another went somewhere else, somewhere very dangerous. He needed to keep this tight to prevent further accidents. He fumed over the hacker's meddling. At least one other person knew what he knew, and his motivations weren’t clear.
“[Bill, I see another ship approaching on the external sensors. It's well within our sensor limits and is on an intercept with us. It’s flashing COMM lasers.]” George announced.
“[What the hell? Casa, weren’t you monitoring for traffic? Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Bill asked, confused.
“[I’m sorry, Bill. I can’t say.]” Casa replied sadly.
“[Can’t say? Can’t say! What are you talking about?]”, Bill asked with increasing heat and concern.
‘[Bill, the approaching ship is hailing us. DAIE Agents Reeves and Donahue are requiring us to maintain course and prepare for boarding.]” Moneta said.
Bill’s confusion was resolved. He understood now why Casa was acting funny. She must have been told the agents were coming and was ordered to be silent. He had hoped to avoid this day by maintaining a low profile and now they couldn’t avoid it. His previous elation evaporated like a snowflake in a fusion exhaust.
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