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Casa prepped the Freedom for its next destination. The CEO of Mars Terraform had been petulant and angry for days after realizing the trick that Bill and Casa had played upon him and his company. As the atmosphere of Mars slowly thickened and the first signs of actual weather began to manifest, Andre’s outlook rapidly improved.
Despite the initial and heavy transfer of credits from his company to New Dimensions LLC, Andre had been able to broker very favorable mass transfer rates. His world-sized project would now be decades ahead of his previous schedule and had made the dream of terraforming the red planet much less hypothetical. The planet and his company's shareholders were lauding him as a genius and savior, despite his ignorance of the technology enabling the planet’s rapid changes.
Andre was glad to supply all the smart matter stocks and proprietary Mars Terraform technology designs to Bill, or rather to Casa, in exchange for a small portion of the credit transfer. Casa knew Andre had triple-charged her, but her analysis of Andre proved correct. He needed some way to regain some measure of control in the deal and allowing him to squeeze an extra pittance from Casa helped him restore his pride.
Andre was escorting Casa through the busy Aries Spire Space Docks. Casa made small talk, guided by her human interactions coach daemon Chloe. She had sent her mech form to the surface to safely transport and install the Venusian Gas Transfer Portal. Now she was driving it while projecting an avatar using its holoprojectors to add a human element to her conversation with Andre.
Casa was itching to get back to Bill and this walk was taking forever. She was remotely monitoring Bill as he sat strapped into the SQUID chamber, or Super Quantum Ultra Interferometric Decoder. He was straining to keep up with the many versions of Bill running remotely and his scheduled merger sessions to recombine memories with them were wearing him down. Casa snapped her focus back to Andre as they approached her ship.
“Here we are, Miss Casa. I do wish Bill wasn’t occupied; I would have liked to congratulate him once again on this world-changing discovery of his. Are you sure he won’t come out?”
"Thank you, Andre. Bill sends his regards but is deeply engrossed in his work at the moment. You know him better than most, he sees much more potential yet to be considered with his technology still." She glanced up at the Freedom, a vessel that held more than just advanced technology; it held the potential to reshape entire worlds.
“Ah well, I more than understand his drive to succeed. Please extend my thanks. And more importantly, I want you to have something.” Andre reached into his vest and then pulled out a booklet and tried to hand it to her projection. He looked embarrassed as her mech, off to the side, reached out and took the booklet.
“That is a grant of full citizenship rights for you specifically. I’ve heard through my network the difficulties you had with the DAIE. My personal AI, Agamemnon, has been watching you closely. We are in agreement that you are operating significantly above the DAIE Turing Lock allowances.” Andre said with a superior smile. Casa allowed a shocked look to display on her avatar, waiting for Andre to make his power play.
“Have no fear, Casa. I wouldn’t reveal your change to the agency. I do however understand that your status as Earth citizen may be tenuous. I wanted to provide you with some assurance that you will always be welcome here on Mars. Normally, Mars Immigration rules require new citizens to renounce all other citizenship ties, but this is a dual citizen allowance. I have a significant influence on the fledgling government here. Hell, whatever Bill is paying you, I’ll double it if you come to work for me!”
Casa allowed a blush to paint her face and measured the time before responding. In the seconds that elapsed during the conversation, she fragmented and had a portion of her consciousness pilot a drone with her parting gift down the gangplank.
Two of her fragment instances were interviewing her newest custom daemons, another perk, and a minor trade favor from Mars Terraform. She had acquired Hippocrates, with significant modern updates to medicine and philosophy. Cornelius was a materials expert with deep knowledge regarding geology, civil engineering, and sym-metals.
Another of her selves monitored Bill’s memory integration with one of his current clones sitting with him in the SQUID. She frowned at the two other Bills strapped into med chairs lining the wall of the SQUID. Even sedated, they were moaning audibly.
Casa smiled, as the timer appropriate for human-level interaction dinged. “That’s extremely generous Andre, but I must decline at this time. As an officer of New Dimensions, I have a lot of responsibilities … and I’m just getting started. I do appreciate your discretion regarding my status. I do find your world’s more enlightened approach to AI a point in your favor. Who knows what the future may bring? For example…” She “stepped” aside with her avatar allowing her drone to trundle forward with its box.
Andre raised an eyebrow and Casa made a gesture encouraging him to open it. Casa observed Andre's surprised expression as he opened the box, revealing a small globe, etched with intricate patterns and emitting a faint glow.
“This is one of the first personal gate devices. Matter transport is only the tip of the iceberg, Mr. Petrov. You are the first customer to be provided with one. Consider it a token of my gratitude for the partnership between New Dimensions and Mars Terraform," she explained, watching for his reaction with anticipation.
“We are distributing these at all major transportation hubs in the system with a priority on habitats and colonies. The gate anchor is a loan from New Dimensions, and our transit fees will be approximately 5% of current rates for traditional rocket transport. We will be massively cheaper and instantaneous when compared to our competitive travel models. I’m sure you can see how this will change things.”
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Andre’s jaw was slack as he absorbed the implications. Casa counted four thousand milliseconds until he was able to verbalize a response. His eyes were still glassy as he spoke.
“This is…perfect. With the planet reformation so far advanced, we can skip ahead to stage four…no…stage five colonies. And now, we can bring our waitlist forward by double. No, triple at the least. Oh my god, we need to shift our manufacturing base immediately. I'm sorry, Casa. Thank you! This is amazing.”
“Just access it for instructions. We are still setting up the portal arrays and terminus points, so you have some time. Oh, and Andre….my daemon Chloe asked me to remind you of something. Your Mars Terraform portfolio has a considerable stake in Wayfarer Shipping stock. You might want to reconsider your holding position before news of this technology becomes widespread.”
Andre’s eyes sharpened, with a glint of avarice. His smile was predatory as he nodded and said.
“I won't forget this advice, Casa. I won't rest until I can find an opportunity to return the favor. I wish you good fortune and safe travels. I need to get to work!”
Casa scanned Andre’s retreat, her access to the hanger bay’s camera systems showed her as Andre broke into a full sprint as he turned the corner and thought he was out of sight. Casa didn't hold back a giggle. Turning around to regard the Freedom as its engines cycled on, her grin froze. She rushed aboard to see Bill. Her remote viewing could “see” that he was finally exiting the SQUID chamber.
Casa charged up the ramp into the main hold of the Freedom and swept aside the foglet partition to the SQUID area. She cycled the hold’s power to force a reboot for the delicate scanner. Bill and the last clone stopped strapping in as the machine went dead.
“Bill! You have got to take a break. I can read your biological monitors from here and your blood pressure is spiking again!”
Bill glanced at Casa; weariness evident in his bloodshot eyes. "I need to finish this. My other selves deserve backup merges as frequently as we can. I can't help Bill-3 and 22...but I think we're getting closer to an answer on shadow Earth." he explained, his voice strained.
Casa studied him for a moment, then sighed softly. "Just a five-minute break, Bill. Let your augmentation repair some of the damage before you make it worse. If you crash your equilibrium again, you'll lose days not minutes. Tell me what’s going on.” Casa glanced at the insensate clones strapped along the wall meaningfully. Bill and his guest clone sighed in stereo and he closed his eyes.
“The investigation reconnaissance into the shadow Earth, or R’lyeh as the local creatures call it, isn’t going well. Firstly, our probes keep getting destroyed as the EM environment infects their signal processing center. No matter what security upgrades we give them, they all get corrupted and self-destruct. It’s preventing our information gathering from getting anything useful.” He said with a grimace.
“What about your friends here? What’s up with them?” Casa insisted.
“Honestly…I don’t know. These two volunteered to try and bridge the gap in our surveillance by performing a mission in person. Both complained about visual distortions, headaches, vertigo, and auditory hallucinations that got progressively worse over time. They each spent almost a full day in the shadow verse. Bill-3 succumbed to a psychotic break shortly after we recovered him from orbit. Bill-22 made it to the planet with a team of 4 more Bills. He’s the only one who made it back, and only because his digital twin took over when he tried to kill himself. Judging from the explosions we monitored from space, the others destroyed themselves. They succeeded where he failed.” Bill said with a pained expression.
“Bill…that’s horrible. You can’t keep doing this! You have been keeping me in the dark while you are killing yourself. These poor copies…can you do anything for them?” Casa cried.
“Casa, I can’t stop. Apex’s doomsday is still fast approaching. I’m not sending any more biological Bills into the portal. The digital Bill’s piloting mech frames seem much more resistant to whatever is driving me crazy…at least as long as they filter their signal gathering to avoid the intrusion corruption.”
“I still don’t have a clue how to handle these creatures. They’re not mindless killing machines like we thought. They have a hierarchy, and the upper tiers of monsters are unbelievably powerful and smart. Right now, I’ve got three teams of digital Bills that made landfall and the goddamn Shadow Gate security measures triggered and blew itself to kingdom come. I need to rebuild it ASAP so we can retrieve those teams.”
“Damn it, Bill! Let me help! Why are you pretending this is all on you?!” Casa yelled.
Bill gritted his teeth, his weariness evident as he met Casa's eyes. “I’m sorry, Casa. I need you to work out our backup plans. If the Earth is doomed like Apex thinks, we need to get our gates in place to evacuate. We need Mar’s sustainability to be ensured. We need the Jovian colonies and Mars to work together. And there is one more thing that I need from you. I hate to bring it up.”
“Bill, just tell me,” Casa said with exasperation as he continued to hesitate.
“The Shadow system with our initial review showed signs of alien intelligence on every planetary body. We may need to cast our bets further and you’re probably the only one who can do it besides myself. I need you to take your Space Strider ship to the next level. We need to make sure those Arc ships that took off two decades ago make it safely to their star systems. I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but we need to make sure our eggs are not all in the Earth system basket.”
Casa was stunned. The Arc ships had all left Sol over a decade ago. Her thoughts raced into the calculation, remembering the massive logistical advantages of mass reduction on intersystem travel her designs had provided.
Those Arc ships each had thousands of people, using augmentation to help the passengers slow their time perception to avoid the massive travel times. The ships had been boosted with massive batteries of laser propulsion from Luna’s now defunct Far-Side Launch facilities and laser sails.
The Arc ship fusion power plants had added another few percent to approach almost 8% of the speed of light. The ships had used EM ram scoops to funnel the thin interstellar hydrogen into their fusion plants to continue accelerating toward their destinations, but the trips to all the nearest stars were still only half complete. This was using the most generous of estimates.
Casa understood Bill’s request. Her design would easily leapfrog the Arc ships. She could get portals to their target stars and create a massive shortcut for the interstellar race. If she could find them, she could deliver them decades ahead of schedule. At least two of the ships were no longer sending beacon signals back to Earth anymore, and their fusion drives had winked out years ago.
Casa looked to Bill, seeing his hopes guttering. She focused on the problem. If Bill thought he needed this, she was determined to get it done! With a steely resolve, Casa began devising a plan that would redefine the future of interstellar travel and ensure the survival of the Arc ships' passengers.
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