Chapter 24: The Last Laugh

High Castle space station, mid-equatorial orbit, Earth

Tuesday, February 20^th, 3117

I powered down the spray gun and gave it a slight push toward a waiting freefall mobile unit. I then pulled off my filter mask and stuck it to my chest pad’s adhesive tab. The air near the hull had the tang of media-delivery volatiles but it was no longer at toxic levels as the slow movement of exhaust air was drawing the pollutants away.

“Have I mentioned before how much I hate painting in zero-G?” I grumped.

Riho stopped playing her tenoroon and replied, “Seven times in just the last two hours, John. Are you finished?”

“Finished complaining or finished painting? Either way, yes. It’s done.”

I commanded the motion arm I was riding to retract and pull me up and back to where Riho waited on a portable magnetic gravity cradle. She’d positioned her perch on top of the vessel, near the chamber’s fresh air feed, so that she could play her tenoroon unencumbered by a filter mask. Once I reached her position, she detached her cradle and joined me, letting the tentacle-like arm reposition us to near the main entry hatch.

I’d needed to use the mechanical anchoring arm because even the tiny thrust from the detail paint sprayer would slowly propel me away from my canvas. And since my current canvas was the curved hull of the L², our raider prototype spacecraft, I needed the arm to periodically pull back to inspect my work from all angles.

Riho patiently polished her instrument before returning it to its collapsible case. Only after that task was done did she look up and inspect the completed artwork.

“I am intrigued by the symbolism, John,” she commented. “Also, the style is unlike that which you usually paint.”

“It’s a form of folk art ... almost sophisticated graffiti. Back in pre-reset times, when my species warred with one another, such images were painted onto the craft they would fly into battle. It’s called nose art.”

“Because it was commonly painted on the front end of such craft?” the Hemru asked.

“That’s correct.”

Riho studied the image for a bit longer.

“The caption ‘The Last Laugh’ is the reason you’ve begun calling this vessel L²?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I assume the name has deeper meanings other than humor?”

“Yes,” I explained. “It’s an ironic shortening of an old saying, ‘He who laughs last, laughs best.’ The last, best laugh, at least in this case, belongs to the victor. The depiction is an attempt to illustrate that for the enemy this will be its utter end, and only the victor, hopefully us, will be ‘laughing’ when it’s done.”

My nose art rendition for the deception craft was not as original as I’d have liked. It was based upon similar nose art which had adorned at least two versions of strategic bomber once employed by my former country, the good ‘ole U. S. of A.

In the original nose art, an evilly-grinning, card-playing, jester clown was depicted showing his hand by tossing it down in front of his unknown adversary. Each of the four revealed cards displayed the image of a single large atom bomb. The message was clear, four-of-a-kind hand-of-doom, an almost-unbeatable surprise knock-out combination.

I’d taken the original art as my inspiration but altered it in two notable ways. The first was that I had replaced the grinning jester clown with an equally grinning familiar black android clown figure instead. I’d also replaced the large bombs displayed on each of the cards with an electric-blue glowing lightning bolt.

I used my implant to transfer the digital image of the original nose art which I’d been using as a guide to Riho and explained, “That’s the art I based this rendition on.”

She was silent as she compared the archival image file to the physical work in front of her.

“The meaning behind your substitutions is clear. This craft will be piloted, and the attack launched, by your AI. The change to include the maniacal representation of Ohmu to represent the AI is adequate. Also, the ‘electric bolt’ image on the cards signifies correctly that the doom delivered onto your enemy will not be physical weaponry but instead a rampant self-replicating digital sentience.”

“You nailed it,” I replied, hiding any sarcasm at her overly-clinical analysis.

“I think it turned out well,” I explained. “It’s too bad we can’t leave it visible.”

Naomi would be covering the entire frontal area of the spacecraft in a forty-millimeter-thick coating of spray-applied ablator. This might protect L² from a few seconds of enemy energy weaponry in case they shot first before asking questions upon our arrival. The AI had also explained that leaving my nose art visible would, at the very least, confuse the enemy. At worst, the Assemblage AI could derive some meaning and become suspicious. The ablator would hide the art nicely.

At Riho’s questioning look, I explained, “The enemy might deduce its meaning if we left it visible.”

“But ... why expend the effort to paint the image in the first place if it will only be hidden away?” she asked, confused.

“Well, I wanted to do it for the good of my soul,” I explained. “It’s hard for me to explain, but understand that the effort makes me feel at ease about my contribution. It’s also a way to honor the previous human world that the enemy destroyed. Naomi will render the nose art fully visible in any imagery disseminated to humans.”

I was wise enough to not add an additional reason of ‘merchandising’ which had just popped into my head. I doubted the Hemru had enough foundation in our visual comedies to be familiar with the works of Mel Brooks. The joke would only confuse her further and I did not want to attempt to explain the reference.

We were silent after that. Riho continued to inspect my painting while I admired the rest of the craft. I was proud of how it had turned out. It really did resemble a modified Titan II missile. The reason we’d kept that long, slender planform was because of the limits of the recently rebuilt Phobos wormhole. To shave off repair time, it had been rebuilt with an intermediate, smaller-diameter wormhole generator than it had been originally equipped with.

The reduced capacity main coil would now only pass a four-and-a-half-meter diameter object. Three months from now, a larger replacement coil will be completed which would be slightly bigger than the original. After that upgrade, the improved Phobos wormhole would pass objects nearly eight meters in diameter.

The reason for the intermediate step was twofold. The first was that, as I already explained, we would have Phobos back in operation an entire month sooner than previously planned. The second reason was that after installing the upgraded final coil, the temporary would be safely stored nearby to serve as a reserve in case of another accident. Even further into the future, a second aiming gantry would be constructed just for the spare and Phobos would have a dual ultra-long-range wormhole capability.

At just under four meters in diameter, we’d sized The Last Laugh so as to be deliverable by the intermediate wormhole. And, with Phobos back in operation sooner, we would even use the wormhole to transport L² instantly from here on High Castle space station to Phobos, thus saving us interplanetary shipping delays.

This wormhole transfer was scheduled to happen by the end of the week, hence tonight’s late-night painting session. As this could very well be the final time I physically saw this deception ship, I was also saying goodbye. If it arrived at Phobos, it would be stored, ready to go, in a nearby cavern until we used it. Since that deployment could happen at any time, and as I did not have any plans on returning to Mars in the near future, tonight was sayonara.

I said if it arrived because we were using the shipment of the deception vessel as an early test of the newly-operational intermediate-sized wormhole. With any new bit of complex technology, something could go wrong, and if it did and L² was lost, Naomi had already started construction on an L³.

“I assume the digital Picket mind-data copy you will be sending along with The Last Laugh is unaware of this ‘nose art’ you’ve adorned its ship with?” Riho asked.

I thought back to the virtual Picket we’d visited in the iterations of the Simulated Reality Project where he and the Master AI had built this ship after discovering hyperdrive propulsion. ‘Built,’ to use the term loosely as he was simply near the top of the pyramid of human template workers and AI-controlled mobile units.

“Well, the mind-data version going with this ship will remember that it was painted in celebration colors to honor the still-living template humans, but not the actual image I’ve just finished. Dionus AI will have altered Picket’s memories to hide what I’ve just dabbed.”

I thought back to my visit into the Simulated Reality Project to observe Picket and the altered iteration. I’d viewed three periods of the most promising iteration. The first was just after Naomi had created the iteration with the altered parameters. The others, including Riho, had gone with me as it was simply an interactive viewing of recorded fake history.

Because it was a replay, we were passive observers only, overflying one of the more-populated industrial areas of the simulated alternate Earth. The time period we witnessed would have been a year after Picket’s arrival via interstellar transmission. In the iteration, the Master AI was in firm control of the system and was following the directives Picket had just delivered from the Ark. That being the immediate embarkation on a system-wide industrial program to build and launch the second Ark.

The simulated Earth we saw in the iteration was a hellish quagmire of pollution and heavy industrialization. The air was nearly unbreathable due to the blast mining, processing, and toxic refining. Even with breathing filters, there was enough radiation in the environment from the liberal use of nuclear mining charges to be lethal in long exposures.

Dionus reported that the remaining human population, the template human colonies, were dying off in high numbers. Others had been incorporated into the industrializing effort. When I saw what they’d become, I was reminded of the Borg from Star Trek, although the implants and cybernetics were more for life sustainment than augmentation. Hannah had agreed and also remarked that the simulated Earth now resembled a few of the better-known dystopian futures from science fiction novels or movies.

Aside from the pollution and wrecked ecosystem, the alternative simulated Earth did have something very intriguing and something which the real Earth lacked, a pair of working space elevators. As we overflew the one based in the Andes Mountains, Ohmu explained that they had been built to cheaply transport large quantities of Ark construction materials to orbit.

When I asked her why the AIs had never pushed to build such an elevator system on the real Earth, Ohmu explained that up until recently, the low human population had not required one. Also, with the discovery and rapid implementation of wormhole technology, an orbital elevator would now likely never be needed, even factoring in the current high energy needed for using the spatial portals.

Our second simulation visit was far more intimate. In this viewing, our group of observers took the points of view of template laborers working in one of the Master AI’s science research and production facilities. Our current project had been the task of building an improved antiproton energy distribution manifold for the future Ark’s acceleration boosters.

We watched as a simulated augmented cyborg made the leap of intuition that resulted in the warp drive breakthrough. I noticed that Uxe had an almost haunted expression as she witnessed the simulated event. News of the breakthrough rapidly spread through the iteration and further experiments were begun to confirm the new technology.

Ganasium and Dionus AIs had carefully embedded into the simulated iteration the fundamentals of two real-world breakthroughs. The first was the method used to produce spatial-distorting exotic matter. The second was a very-contrived handwavium method to allow that energized matter to pull along the machinery and any attached space vessel through warped space.

The latter was compounded by the fact that such a method did not, and could not, exist. The AIs had to develop a complicated persistent virus-like algorithm that would force any simulated intelligence in the iteration which studied the impossible science to ‘think’ that it was understandable and viable.

Because of this redacting virus, each intelligence, all the way up to the simulated Master AI, simply ‘knew’ that the technology worked. It was a masterpiece of layered fakery in an already fake simulation. I could hardly believe we were seriously contemplating sending our fake spaceship to the enemy to attempt to convince it to believe such a layer cake of lies.

But, in the SRP iteration, Picket and the Master AI were convinced and that was enough. Dionus then influenced them into seeking to return this new ‘miracle’ technology back to their Assemblage creators. What better way to quickly send back the news than on a warp drive starship built to exploit that very miracle technology? To save space and resources, and because there was no need, there would be no physical crew on board, just a large data archive that would include one mind-data copy of the enemy’s operative, Picket.

Uxe had remained upset when we returned to the virtual lobby after leaving the second visit to the SRP iteration. I’d taken her aside to talk in private, and at first she had not wanted to discuss it. But, being a stubborn cantankerous bastard at times has its usefulness and I was able to get her to open up.

“John!” she’d sobbed. “Do you think I’ve made myself into a monster like those altered template humans we saw in the simulation?

“Uxe honey,” I’d said softly. “You of all people know that physical appearance means little in this day and age. Anyone can alter their appearance at will and what matters is what’s inside. I think the augment implants you wear make you look brave and devoted. You make me proud and I know that the kids feel the same.”

She had sobbed quietly for a minute while I virtually held her. Finally, she recovered and we made our goodbyes. After she was gone, I asked Naomi and Dionus why the AIs had depicted augmented humans as being the method to inject the discovery of the fake warp drive technologies into the simulation. Had it been some misguided attempt to honor Uxe who’d made a similar breakthrough with wormholes in real life?

The AIs had replied that it needed a human being to be part of the discovery chain as the Master AI was incapable of the leaps of intuition required. They pointed out that, much as it had taken the augmented Uxe to discover wormhole theory, they needed something similar in the SRP. It was too unlikely that any true AI would have researched such ‘impossible’ theories on its own.

Uxe had not joined the group for the final, third visit to the iteration. The timeline of the iteration had been adjusted so that it was nearly in line with reality and we watched from one of the orbital shipyards as the new warp drive vessel left Earth orbit. It was strange seeing a spaceship that looked exactly like our Last Laugh leaving under Master AI control.

Of course, the fake iteration ship had to look similar to the one we’d built, as we needed Picket’s memories of its construction to match. The simulated launch imagery would also be included in the records of the real physical L² as it would have received radio traffic up until it went into warp.

Dionus attempted to explain how it had manipulated events in the simulation to direct the ship’s design which I mostly tuned out. What had caught my eye was that three of the iterations fell apart as the simulated AIs in each diverged from reality too far. That was why Naomi had started as many versions as it had.

Immediately after the simulated warp ship left our system, the iteration froze and we were ejected into the virtual lobby. The simulation would remain paused unless and until we needed it again. Why would we need it? Well, if something went wrong with the real, physical L², we would need a simulated viable reason to build the L³. The iteration could then be booted back up and a replacement ship justified, along with another version of the duped Picket.

I was glad when the visits into the simulations were over as they had been surreal and creepy. There was too much fakery and with overexposure one started doubting what was real. I suspected we would all have a nightmare or two in the near future resulting from our visit. The kind where we would doubt that we were in actual reality.

Heels in the Sand Island, Earth

Friday, February 23^th, 3117

“I was wondering when I would be hearing from you,” Jonathon quipped.

“You think you know me so well?” I responded instantly.

We were speaking the old way, not in virtual, but with video screens. I was currently in my island workshop which had been converted into a makeshift apartment for our short stay. Serenity had fully taken over the upper lodge and we’d not wanted to intrude.

Outside, the rare morning rain was increasing in strength as an even rarer morning thunderstorm descended upon the island. Riho was down at the far end of the north beach in the indoor activities pavilion busy entertaining the island’s guests with her music and stories.

My closest-brother just grinned a moment before turning serious. “By the way, great job with the nose art on The Last Laugh. Thank you for sending me the imagery.”

“No problem. I knew you of all people would appreciate it as much as me.”

He just nodded. Despite his altered memories, like me, Jonathon still remembered most of his childhood. This included having been raised a child of the cold war, when the original nose art had been flown proudly and often.

“How are things on Vesta?” I asked, delaying bringing up the main reason I’d contacted him.

“Very good. We’ve been keeping Sarissa busy sending through flagpoles every three or four days. The only downside to that is that we seem to be suffering under a constant energy shortage. Most of the residents are getting used to it though. They’ve even renamed the gravity habitat ‘The Night Train’ because of the reduced lighting.”

While the war was paused, we were using Sarissa to send ‘flagpole’ scouting probes to each of the eight notable star systems within its current range of nine light years. Why call them flagpoles? Well, to fit a decent-sized, space-based astronomical telescope through a wormhole that can only pass an object fifteen centimeters in diameter, we needed to make them narrow and very very long, just like a flagpole.

So far, since the Phobos accident, we’d sent at least two survey probes to each star system, even the red dwarf flare stars Wolf 359, Barnard’s Star, and the brown dwarf WISE 0855−0714. We’d sent four probes to the Sirius system and five to Alpha Centauri, with three of those targeting Rigil Kentaurus, the most sun-like star in that trinary system.

Important data was beginning to trickle back from the deployed probes as the busy Sarissa revisited each system every few weeks for updates. I had mixed feelings about the exploration effort. Despite the wealth of new knowledge, the survey campaign siphoned resources from the war effort.

The flagpole missions were a compromise between the pro-war faction and exploration-first faction. The latter arguing that with Phobos down, and with the Sarissa wormhole free for research, why not use it? They were already pushing for time on the rebuilt Phobos mechanism to send through bigger scouts and even colonizer auto-factories.

“Won’t the new fusion plant being constructed help with the power situation when it comes online?” I asked.

We were using the downtime to increase Vesta’s base fusion power generation capacity. Doing so would eliminate the need for using the supplemental energy atomic dynamo space station orbiting the asteroid, thus freeing up its fissionable fuel for use at Mars.

“It should, but I predict they will simply use Sarissa more when the additional power production becomes available,” Jonathon explained. “But all this chatter is not the reason you contacted me. You want my advice?”

“Well, all-knowing one, please answer the question or questions you think I’m going to ask,” I dared.

“Yes, yes, and maybe,” he said smugly.

I just smiled and shook my head.

“Okay! How about this then,” he continued. “Yes, Acid Rain is still ready to go. Yes, I think we will end up having to use it. And maybe we can use it without harming anyone on Vesta or compromising our artificial intelligences system-wide.”

I was impressed as this was very close to what I’d wanted to discuss.

“That almost works, although my second question wasn’t if you think acid rain will ever be needed. It was actually, should we use it right now?”

Jonathon pursed his lips and whistled. “You want to use it now? Why!? What have you learned?”

“Well, not right now, now, but soon. And, it’s not anything new we’ve learned ... just more of a gut feeling,” I replied uneasily. “Maybe I fear that the exploration factions will overcome the war faction and we will lose our chance?”

After a pause, I continued, “I wish I knew why I am leaning so strongly this way. Maybe I should be asking you why I feel so strongly about using Acid Rain right away.”

He was silent for a long time. “That’s a hard question to answer. I’ve ... no, we, have always had good gut instincts. It’s served me well over the centuries as I know it’s served you also.”

“I realize we can’t use it right this minute. For one, we have to finish the upgrades to the Vesta power infrastructure,” I explained. “That will take at least two more weeks. The other reason is we would need to evacuate a substantial portion of Vesta’s inhabitants.”

“Why would using acid rain be dependent upon having the new fusion plant fully operational?” Jonathon asked. “After all, we still have the atomic dynamo satellite standing by.”

“We’ve altered the final design of the fake hyperdrive,” I explained. “Sarissa will have to be active for the duration the Last Laugh is in Assemblage space.”

At his inquisitive look I went on to explain in detail how we had revised the operational plan for the false hyperdrive aboard the Last Laugh. Instead of the original concept of claiming the ship dumped its hyperdrive engine before arriving in the vicinity of the Ark out of caution, we were now leaving it in place. And to provide a reason for it being nonfunctional, we would use the excuse that it had depleted its exotic matter “fuel”.

The empty fuel tank also gave us enough empty volume on board Last Laugh in which to anchor a continuous eight-light-year-long Sarissa micro-com wormhole link. The link would remain active at all times, shifting its terminus in real time as the Last Laugh was maneuvered in close and hopefully docked with the enemy Ark.

Despite the constant high energy input requirements, there were many benefits to this plan. The first was that the active wormhole link would provide instant feedback so we would know when the enemy began attempting to decrypt Last Laugh’s data archives.

Secondly, the active spatial distortion generated by the micro-wormhole would be detectable by the enemy. The strange energy distortions would help sell the idea that the Last Laugh did have a working hyperdrive. The unexplained distortion waves would hopefully make them cautious enough to not immediately start dismantling the deception vessel in order to probe its inner workings.

Finally, the constantly active micro link would allow for a great pathway to feed real-time surveillance and sensor data back to Earth. It would be expected that a hyperspace vessel would have a robust sensor suite. These would be kept operating as the Last Laugh was brought in close to the enemy. We would have nearly-instant access to this valuable intelligence.

“So, the real reason for the new fusion power plant is not to ease Vesta’s energy shortage, but to allow Sarissa to maintain this constant eight-light-year-long link?” Jonathon summarized.

“Pretty much now it is,” I replied. “Although construction had started long before we knew we needed the constant wormhole. Fissionable fuel is becoming too valuable and what we have is better used at Phobos to power the larger wormhole.

“Fusion is more reliable too. If we used dynamo power, we’d run an increased risk of power supply disruption. That would be fatal to the deception mission as there would be no way to reestablish an accurate link once it was very near the Ark.”

“What about the dangers of the Assemblage discovering the active Sarissa wormhole?” Jonathon asked next. “I thought that was why the deception ship was to have the fake hyperdrive?”

“That is the risk,” I admitted, nodding thoughtfully. “But, the encrypted archives onboard L² will contain no real data about our wormholes. And, the exotic matter storage tank where the micro wormhole terminus will be targeted will be sealed. We will know instantly if the enemy begins to tamper with the tank. If they risk it, we will immediately shut down the wormhole and scuttle the ship.”

“Can we do that reliably?” Jonathon asked.

“The plan is that if we need to destroy the L², just before the wormhole is shut down we’ll send through a capsule of exotic antimatter. A few grams but enough to fully vaporize the Last Laugh and all the evidence of our deception attempt with it.”

Jonathon whistled. “Exotic antimatter ... I bet that cost a pretty penny.”

“No shit,” I replied. “Hopefully we won’t need to resort to using that option.”

Exotic antimatter was very, very costly and difficult to produce. We only had a few dozen grams in existence and lacked the resources to quickly make more. Why would we waste it to destroy the deception ship? Well, it reacted with normal matter in very strange ways, not a typical annihilation as half the energy released went into some as-of-yet unknown subspace realm. Again, this worked in our favor as the Assemblage would have no idea what to make of the fallout from the explosion.

“The partially-sentient autopilot AI on board the ship will be screaming to the Assemblage to not mess with its fuel tank,” I explained. “Even better, the encrypted data archives are partially embedded into the tank structure making safe separation virtualy impossible. At least that’s what we are hoping.”

Making the deception ship explode was our fallback recourse for many possible ways the plan could fail. Naomi had already started on the replacement vessels for future missions as the odds were high that our first attempt would fail. The plan was that if the first ship was scuttled, we’d simply wait a few months and try again.

The Picket version on board the next deception ship would simply report that the Earth had given up waiting for a reply from the first ship, and assuming the worst, had built and sent a second. There could even be a third or fourth ... as many as needed really, until one worked as intended.

“So ... two weeks until the fusion plant is in operation here on Vesta. I assume The Last Laugh made it to Phobos?

“Yes,” I replied. “The intermediate wormhole was first activated yesterday morning. After a series of tests, it poked the Last Laugh through to Phobos late last night. Once through the wormhole aperture, three of Naomi’s big space tugs grabbed it and transported it into the waiting storage silo. The whole operation barely took twenty minutes.”

Jonathon had a sudden far-off look. He was probably contemplating how wormhole tech would have made his mission of the last century so much easier. “How long will it take to get it ready to deploy to Ark space if you give the word?” he asked, after returning from his recollections.

“An hour would be optimal, assuming that the dynamos have sufficient fissionable fuel in reserve.”

“I am guessing that you’ve mandated that a minimum reserve be maintained at all times?”

I just smiled. Jonathon thought too much like me at times.

“Well,” he said, with a sigh. “I’ll probably take some time off for the next week or two. It’s likely to get interesting after that.”

“I’ve not yet decided!” I growled. “Besides, Uxe thinks we should wait.”

“Well ... don’t you have yourself a pickle,” he replied, clearly amused. “You need one of us to turn the activation key with you.”