Chapter 27: Oops

I recognized Probe Ohno’s voice as the derivative of Ohmu’s from back when we sent it to the Hemru probe, but the android had now pitched it much deeper, almost grating. It was the perfect authoritative, commanding voice. The two space-suited figures jerked to a stop, clearly surprised that anyone of authority remained at the evacuated facility.

“This area is under an electromagnetic alert!” Probe Ohno continued. “You are not permitted to be here at this time. Therefore, you must leave immediately!”

“I am Director Carn-Conlin,” one of the space-suited figures replied, clarifying who was who.

The Director must have been shaken up as she had still identified herself despite the fact that Probe Ohno had already addressed both of them by their full names and titles. On the wall display, floating labels appeared over the identically space-suited figures.

“I am here to inspect this facility by my authority!” the director continued. “You can’t bar us from any facility we wish to inspect.”

“Naomi, patch me though,” I said more calmly than I felt.

—You are patched in though Probe Ohno, John—

“Directors! This is John Abrams. This facility is under an emergency EM alert and you must leave immediately.”

The suited figures were silent for a moment. Director Williams leaned over and touched helmets with Director Carn-Conlin so they could speak without transmitting. Finally, after a few words were exchanged, they broke apart.

“Why is there an EM alert?” Director Williams asked, much more calmly than his comrade. “We’ve never needed one before when sending wormholes to the Assemblage Ark?”

“This time our wormhole is at point-blank range with the enemy.” I replied matter-of-factly, as if the answer was obvious.

“We know you are doing something dangerous here!” Director Carn-Conlin almost snarled, usurping the conversation back from the calmer Director. “We will get to the bottom of it!”

“No, you won’t,” I replied, once again sounding eerily calm. “You won’t be allowed to approach any closer. In fact, you will both turn around, get in your stolen shuttle, and fly back to the habitat area immediately.”

“What? Are you going to have your mobile unit harm us if we don’t?” Director Carn-Conlin asked, ignoring my accusation of their theft. “Others know we were coming here and why.”

She must have been counting on the fact that they would be noticed if they went missing, or she had made arrangements in case of her disappearance, or both.

“No, but I will have a wormhole scoop you both up to transport you out of the danger area,” I replied. “It will be very risky targeting you all the way from Earth, but the AI should be able to avoid scraping your skulls. Of course, your legs would have to be left behind as the wormhole would need to be shut down before coming into contact with the surface.”

I had no idea if such a thing was possible, but I’d said the first horrifying thing that came to mind.

“You wouldn’t dare!” Director Carn-Conlin shouted.

Her voice was quavering and my comment seemed to have the desired effect on Director Williams as he began looking around quickly as if beginning to panic. I noticed the distortion of a one-hundred-fifty-centimeter portal appear in space above them.

Three small triangulation stalks emerged, each with a flashing red beacon. The stalks seemed to angle towards the directors, locking them in their sights. Way to go Naomi!

“Look up,” I said. “Your ride is here. I wouldn’t make any sudden movements or you might lose your arms too. Naomi, if they do not turn around and leave in the next five seconds, poke them back to Earth orbit. Oh ... please try not to damage their heads.”

—Yes, John. Directors, if you choose to accept my transport, please be considerate of the ongoing energy shortages and hug one another tightly so that both can be encompassed in one pass. Five ... Four... —

I’d heard Naomi’s statement through my implant but it had also been projected to the Directors audibly, so there was a distracting echo as the AI counted down. At ‘Three’ Director Williams turned and attempted to bolt back to the shuttle. The microgravity made him look like he was running in place. Director Carn-Conlin stood frozen watching the still-descending wormhole. As the countdown hit ‘Two’, the director tried to turn too quickly and ended up spinning in place.

Alek and Hannah, who had both looked surprised upon hearing Naomi’s ultimatum, started laughing. I hoped that Naomi had cut them from the voice transmission so as not to antagonize the Directors and make them rethink their awkward exit.

“Well done, Naomi,” I subvocalized. “That was fast action.”

—Yes. It is fortunate that the Directors chose to flee as, though I have the energy to transport them to High Castle, I currently lack sufficient amounts to compensate for the spatial velocity differences.—

“Wouldn’t that have killed them?” I asked, unsure of what the AI meant but imagining the Directors arriving into High Castle like screaming meteors.

—Likely yes, but not immediately. In preparing for possible transport from their current vacuum environment, I have opened the station’s wormhole transport bubble to space. Coincidentally, the vectors currently align just enough so that as the Directors emerge from the wormhole with their remnant velocity of over eight kilometers per second, they would have missed impacting the enclosure’s walls and instead shot out the open hatchway into free orbital space—

“Oh! I see,” I exclaimed, barely keeping it subvocal. “But if they were flying free outside the space station, wouldn’t their space suits have protected them until a pickup could be arranged?”

—Normally yes, but as their current departure vector would also intersect the Earth’s surface just six minutes later, it is improbable that they could have been retrieved in time to prevent reentry.—

Jesus! Screaming meteors indeed! I imagined myself shooting through space heading toward Earth, reentering the atmosphere without shielding and feeling myself quickly heating up. Would I die from burning or from the crushing deceleration forces? I felt not much better when I pictured the Directors undergoing the same. Their deaths would have the additional downside in that their suit radios would have broadcast their screams until either end.

“That Director does not like you, John,” Uxe said, bringing me back from my gruesome contemplation.

She was rubbing her temples, clearly fatigued or in pain.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be in bed, Honey?” I said to her.

The wall display captured both her scowl and her rude gesture.

“I just have a headache,” she admitted with a sigh. “One of the joys of living in a shell without implants I guess.”

The Directors had finally remembered to use their suit’s mobility thrusters and had reached the shuttle’s open hatch. They tried to enter simultaneously before Director Carn-Conlin pulled Director Williams aside and climbed in first. Hannah and Alek were laughing again and I would have joined them if not for the still-fresh visions of their meteoric deaths.

As soon as the shuttle’s hatch closed, it wobbled off the landing pad. Naomi maneuvered the wormhole so that it remained in viewing range of the shuttle’s main viewport as it turned and fled. The reminder making them hurry and keep close to the asteroid. I watched nervous that they might crash but soon they were gone over the horizon.

Just in time too as Praxcia announced, “The Sarissa relay is reporting high-frequency discrete signals probing the Last Laugh’s main input and output buffers. This is clearly an attempt to verify the ultra-high bandwidth linkage.”

The window showing us the view from Probe Ohno’s perspective swiveled rapidly as the unit turned and quickly headed back towards the airlock. Probe Ohno was hustling to get back inside and resume its sentry duties. The imagery cut off just before Ohno disappeared inside as Naomi shut down its emergency micro-hole com link to the unit.

“I think this is happening!” Hannah exclaimed.

—Jonathan and John, ready your keys.— Naomi said rapidly. —Please quickly follow Rosie and Ohmu to where there is more clearance for the pending arrival of the Acid Rain emergency micro-hole activation link.—

Ohmu stood quickly and extended her hand toward me. “The gallery area near the dining table should do. Come, John, quickly!”

As I was almost pulled out of the media area, I caught Jonathon following Rosie to a roomier space also. The two androids were acting as locators for Naomi who would form compound wormholes linking us from wherever we were currently to the Acid Rain activation console on Vesta via the High Castle space station.

‘‘I can get up!” I heard Uxe yelling from the media area. “I want to be ready to do this with them in case there’s a glitch.”

I could still see the media screen from where Ohmu had positioned me and I saw Uxe struggling to rise out of her bed. Kela was there assisting her while Rami was yelling at her to stay put. We only needed two authenticators but I could understand her wish to provide redundancy. I decided to stay out of it and let them and Naomi battle it out.

A new window opened on the wall screen which showed the familiar view of the rebuilt Phobos wormhole facility. The larger portal was being activated to Ark space to allow us to poke through an observation sensor to watch what happened if we did proceed with Acid Rain. Praxcia and Beatrice would also be using the Phobos portal to launch their follow-on missile attack.

A second new window opened on the media wall. This view was from the small, overwatching doomsday satellite that Jonathon had deployed around Vesta back when we first activated Acid Rain. The satellite’s position was fixed above Vesta’s equator, in a geosynchronous orbit at 549 kilometers altitude. The satellite’s distance and fixed position gave us a good angle to watch both the Sarissa crater and the nearby Acid Rain entry platform.

Aside from giving us a bird’s eye view of both places, the satellite also acted as another safety, hence the Doomsday moniker. It contained two small but powerful fusion warhead missiles, each fast enough to reach either complex in less than a minute.

The view from the overwatch satellite was currently zooming in toward the Acid Rain landing platform. An indicator appeared over a small, surface-skimming object rapidly approaching the platform. It was the hopper shuttle! Director Carn-Conlin must have heard rumors about Acid Rain and was trying to sneak in!

“Son of a bitch!” I yelled. “Can you shoot it down?”

—There is too little time, John, — Naomi replied.

The others looked confused, not having yet spotted the small moving hopper.

Praxcia distracted them further with its next statement, “Alert! The first encrypted data archive has just been accessed. Time to full decryption took just 2.0656 seconds.”

“The Assemblage took the bait!” Alek yelled.

Uxe spoke up at the same time, “It would have taken a level one, or possibly an augmented level two, AI to decrypt the first data group so quickly!”

We’d left one last tripwire behind The Last Laugh’s firewall and that was a small portion of the data protected by a slightly weaker encryption method. We’d intended these files to be both further bait and to act as a gauge so as to determine the intelligence capacity of the entity attempting to penetrate our encryption. We’d just confirmed that the Assemblage was using a very high-capacity intelligence. The Last Laugh must be fully linked with the enemy’s entire main controlling AI!

“Penetration of the remaining archive encryption is now estimated at twenty-two seconds, plus or minus two seconds,” Praxcia reported, still speaking rapidly. “I have activated the fail-safe antimatter injection mechanism. Sarissa will send through the scuttling charge in eighteen seconds from ... now.”

This meant that even if we did not activate Acid Rain, Praxcia would be ending the Last Laugh mission for good before the final data archive was opened. Dammit! This was happening too fast! The enemy had bit our hook hard and fast!

—John, I recommend... —

“Do it!” I yelled, interrupting Naomi.

Jonathon was yelling something also which I missed.

—Ready keys. I am activating the verification wormhole linkage now. Beware, I have limited control over the following operation and the orientations will be odd.—

I’d been holding my genealogy amulet ready and now jerked it off its chain. While I fumbled to detach the activation key, Ohmu spread her arms keeping me safely behind her. Two meters in front of us, a small, thirty-centimeter diameter wormhole popped into existence. I felt the sudden wave of nausea pass over me from the wormhole’s abrupt and close-proximity formation.

The wormhole formed near the floor, edge on and severely slanted. It was also slowly rising and was now at waist height. I hesitated, not knowing which side of the portal was its entrance.

“Access the linking wormhole from the bottom!” Ohmu spoke quickly. “Hurry, John! Beware the portal perimeter!”

A countdown voice came through my implant. —Key turn, Five ... Four... —

“Remember, after you turn the key FULLY,” Ohmu explained over the countdown, “ ... you will only have two seconds to remove your hand.”

Shit! I got the key positioned properly in my right hand as Ohmu almost shoved me down to where I could access the still-rising wormhole. As I moved into position to look up into the portal from a perpendicular angle, I was able to see through the sequential wormholes the distant Acid Rain key console. There was a large flashing circle of red light. This indicated where on the console I was to position my key.

“Do not touch the periphery!” Ohmu warned again as I stuck my arm carefully up into the slowly rising portal.

The key countdown passed two seconds. The portal had risen to chest height and Ohmu was now helping to lift me into my knees so I could continue to reach the console. Jesus, what a stupid design! We’d never imagined this being so urgent and perilous.

Hindsight was a wonderful thing and I choked back a laugh at the sudden thought that we would get it right the next time! Here goes everything I thought as I quickly stabbed my arm upward the remaining few centimeters and felt the key engage the socket in the console. While I did, I spared a thought to Jonathon who I hoped was doing the same on his end.

— ... One ... Zero.— I heard via my implant.

I rotated my key fully clockwise as I’d been instructed. The entire console flashed red once and then turned green. Green meant activation. We’d done it! Jonathon must have turned his key at the correct time as well!

Now I had two seconds to get my arm out of the activation wormhole before it automatically closed. As I began to pull my arm out, I was distracted by the lightning bright flash of the nearby chemical shock tubes firing and flinched. The tubes sent the instructions to wake Acid Rain. There was no backing out now. We’d woken a god and all that remained was to name it our savior or our doom.

—Links terminating in one second—

When I’d flinched, I’d felt a weird sting from my thumb. Ohmu heaved me back just as the small wormhole vanished. I again felt the nausea from the portal closure but this time it might have also been due to the blood spurting out of what remained of my thumb. Dammit! I’d clumsily grazed the edge of the fucking wormhole when I’d jerked out my arm!

“Acid Rain activation and shunting wormhole detected,” Praxcia stated quickly. “Commencing stinger deployment through Sarissa.”

“Dad! You’re bleeding!” Alek yelled.

I was actually spurting blood. Apparently, there was no cauterization in a wormhole accident. Who would have thought? Well, now I knew. I looked around for something to staunch the flow. Ohmu ran off to the bathroom where the trauma kit was kept.

On the wall display, the window showing Jonathon went dark. A few other windows showing data from Vesta also went dark. With Acid Rain activated, Naomi had no choice but to quarantine the asteroid fully. I hoped everyone remaining there was safe in a bunker.

“Stinger deployed. Link to Sarissa terminated to maintain electromagnetic security,” Praxcia reported.

We were now forever blind to what happened inside The Last Laugh. Acid rain must be nearly fully active by now. I could only imagine what was happening on Vesta in those secret boreholes. I also had a quick thought about Sarissa. Would our valuable wormhole facility survive the passage of the desperate transcendent emergent intelligence without being burned in the process?

Probe Ohno was the only one still active there to watch over the complex. Waiting with its digital finger on the trigger to the backpack fusion bomb strapped to its cyborg torso, I could only wish it luck. With most of the data links severed, the sudden lack of news was jarring. I looked around the room at the others, at a loss for what to do next.

I ignored my bleeding stump and searched out the last remaining data feed from the Vesta which was the doomsday overwatch satellite. I saw that the shuttle with the Directors had just landed on the acid rain pad. I almost felt sorry for the two humans who had no idea what was happening just below their feet.

Meanwhile, inside the Acid rain complex

Elon station, Mars orbit

The present

With my left hand clutching my right hand’s thumb stump in an attempt to stem the spurting of my lifeblood, I was unable to shield my eyes from the sudden glare of nuclear fire now showing on the wall display. The source of the bright image was the feed from the overwatch satellite we’d deployed in geosynchronous orbit around Vesta.

The satellite’s imagers had been zoomed into the landing area above Acid Rain. And, where once sat the stolen shuttle and stood the two space-suited human Directors, now was a gout of fission fire. The image zoomed back and dimmed, and five more gouts of fire came into view surrounding the first.

Acid rain had exploded ... or, more correctly, the six neutron bombs we’d buried below the outer boreholes and the central complex had exploded. They would only have detonated if the facility had successfully activated. But, had the transcendent whatever been created? And, if it had, had it managed to escape via the wormhole we’d conveniently linked to Sarissa and to the enemy Ark beyond?

“Holy shit!” Alek said. “Tell me that was supposed to happen.”

“It was supposed to happen,” his mother replied stoically. “Naomi, are you detecting any leakage? Are you detecting anything from the Ark?”

”I am detecting no signs of an inadvertent emergence, Uxe,” Naomi reported audibly. “Note, the overwatch satellite had detected no explosions at the Sarissa site as of yet. No data is available from the Assemblage Ark.”

“The Directors are dead,” Hannah said simply. “I was watching them exit the shuttle just as the bombs detonated. Now there is nothing.”

I glanced at Hannah puzzled at her tone. Had the Directors death really affected her that much? Maybe the reality that people would die, had died, might still die, had not sunken into her vision for this war.

The wall display view from the satellite rapidly dimmed as the explosion plasmas dispersed and the filters kicked in. The image was now also saturated with static and dead zones from the gamma flux that had just exited the asteroid. It looked like one of the tilted processor boreholes had been nearly perfectly aligned with the location of the stationary satellite. Naomi would have to send in a replacement.

The window which had been showing the forming Phobos wormhole now switched to the point of view of the sensor stalk which had just been inserted into Ark space. The image panned around swiftly until the enemy Ark was centered. The Ark appeared very small as, to hopefully keep it undetected, the wormhole had been targeted nearly a hundred thousand kilometers away.

From this distance, no motion on or around the Ark was visible. There were no visible signs that the Ark had been affected by Acid Rain. No strange signals were now being detected. As a precaution against just that, our sensor was shielded and equipped with data rate limiters and analog repeaters. This made the image grainy and slightly out of focus.

The EM receiver in the sensor stalk was also filtered against fast electromagnet modulations or frequency shifts to such an extent that only very broad patterns would be allowed through. Still, no emissions at all were being detected. Maybe our acid rain godchild had not made it through the wormhole to reach the Ark after all?

“Did it fail?” I asked the others.

Twelve seconds earlier, inside the Assemblage Ark