16
Hammond Aerospace
Denver, Colorado
The same conference room that had first hosted Traci and Roy had been turned into the nerve center for the Columbus project. Its windows were now papered over with vehicle schematics and program timelines, while every square inch of previously empty floor space had been occupied by extra computer workstations. The big walnut table in its center was now covered with reference manuals and technical specs, either in stacks of paper or on a half dozen tablets scattered across its surface. Monitors along one wall displayed feeds from the HOPE control center in Grand Cayman.
She couldn’t hide her amazement at how quickly they’d moved into action. No steering committees or endless planning meetings: With no regard to how improbable the task would be, Hammond’s crew knew what had to be done and had jumped into it. With precious little time to get the spacecraft ready, it was beginning to feel like they just might pull this off.
Owen was hunched over a terminal in one corner that had been linked to HOPE’s network. One of its screens flashed to life with columns of data, the vital signs of a revived patient. “We’ve got telemetry!”
She wasn’t the only one to stifle a grin at the mission manager’s excitement. He seemed as surprised as anyone that the first item on their lengthy timetable had gone so smoothly. Without a word, Audrey stood to make a small checkmark on her master timeline.
“Columbus is back from the dead,” Hammond said. “That’s one down. How many hundreds to go?”
Audrey scrolled through the master chart on a wall monitor. “About three hundred sixty, give or take a few dozen.” She turned to Owen. “How’s the reactor?”
Owen scrolled through the growing tables of vital information. While not the first item on his lengthy checklist, he also knew it was the next “critical path” event. Without the ability to generate plasma for its engines, Columbus would be stranded in its current orbit. “Function checks are still ongoing. Control rods have been getting bathed in neutrons for a few years now. We’re going to have to take this one slowly.”
“Understood,” she said, eyes still fixed on the timeline. Replacing spent control rods was one of several “showstopper” items. “But a lot still hinges on that one. The sooner we can get it into low orbit, the sooner we can start rotating more service teams up there.” She tapped a point on the chart and turned to Traci and Roy. “We’ve got Clipper sorties booked every week, starting in ten days. Lowest altitude we can safely park Columbus at is two hundred eighty kilometers.”
That translated to a little over a hundred and fifty nautical miles. “What kind of impact does that have on your uplift?” Traci asked.
“It’s in the wrong corner of our payload/range envelope,” Audrey said. “Nominal altitude for an orbital Clipper is two hundred klicks, which nets us five metric tons of cargo. Going this high takes it down to a little over three tons.”
“We can give you some more margin when we get up there,” Roy said. “Lower our orbit to meet your supply runs, then boost her back up.”
Audrey shook her head. “That’s going to take propellant you can’t spare.”
“What’s a few meters per second between friends?” Roy said. She answered him with a skeptical glare. He backtracked, waving at her timeline. “Depends on how you look at it. You have a couple of long burns built into that schedule, right?”
Audrey looked back at her timetable. “Day 133. Shakedown burn up to GEO prior to Earth departure.”
“We don’t need it.”
“Those engines have been cold for five years,” Audrey said with some alarm. “They’ve got to be run before you commit.”
“Not saying they don’t. I’m saying we do it more frequently. Keene knows what I’m talking about.” He looked to her for support.
Traci was reluctant to mess with their project plan this soon. Small changes now could have outsized impacts later, but Roy had a point. “Those engines are made to run continuously,” she finally said. “Relighting them every few days to change orbits could be the perfect stress test, and much earlier in the process. We only need a few meters per second for each burn.” She shot a cautious look at Roy. “It’ll keep us busy, though.”
“That it will,” he agreed. “Better than any sim session, I’d argue.”
“That’s another subject for another day,” Hammond interjected. “We have you booked for three solid weeks in the Houston simulator bay. There won’t be time to add more scenarios.”
“Won’t need to,” Roy said. “We know how to fly that thing. We’ll know it better if we can light the main drive a few times after we’ve worked out the kinks in the sim.”
Audrey tapped at her chin as she studied the sequence of events. “Max zero-fuel weight on each launch gets us a lot more payload, Art.” She traced a finger along the chart. “Say we start doing this on Day 120, after the crew’s aboard. Two more metric tons to orbit each week is equivalent to three extra Clipper sorties a month. That gets them fully loaded out by—” She paused, jumping ahead. “Day 159.”
Roy crossed his arms and leaned back triumphantly. “A month ahead of schedule. And I like lots of padding in my schedule.”
“How much propellant do we save by leaving early?” Traci asked. “Maybe enough to make up what we spent changing altitude?”
Owen was more concerned with the timeline. “Five months.” He turned away from his terminal before Audrey had a chance to run the numbers in her head. “Can you guys be ready in five months?”
“We’re ready to blast now,” Traci said, then pointed at the ceiling. “Question is, will the vehicle be ready?”
“That brings us back to where we started,” Owen said, “which is kind of my point. We’re already on a wildly optimistic timeline and you’re asking to compress it even more.”
“If we can’t, we can’t,” Roy said. “But if we can, we will. If not, we’ll sit in orbit and run more checks and drills while you guys catch up to us.”
Traci leaned over the table and folded her hands. “There’s another wrinkle we haven’t fully explored. The AI copilot. What’s its name again?”
“Artificial Intelligence Crew Support System,” Owen said. “We’ve been calling it Ace.”
A corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk. The naming conventions always tended to be convoluted. She’d address that later. “I can tell you that’s going to be the long pole in the tent. We’re not concerned about the engines. They’ll either work, or they won’t. If the life support loop is balky, we don’t go. We can work on those kinds of hurdles all the way up to departure. Getting comfortable with the AI takes time.” She focused on Owen. “You know we can’t just flip a switch and start giving orders. When will it be activated?”
Owen checked his watch. This part he’d committed to memory. “In about three hours, assuming everything else goes to plan.” He pointed her to a nearby empty terminal. “I figured you’d want to be there when he wakes up.”
Traci watched as Owen’s control team in Grand Cayman worked with the service crew in orbit to painstakingly bring Columbus back to life. They had started with the control deck and made their way through each module to restore basic functions. Only when the ship was stable and under control did they open the AI’s server compartment.
Owen pointed to an indicator on her screen. “Here we go. They’re in the server bay.” Together they listened to the live feed of cross talk between the crew in orbit and engineers in Cayman. Audrey hovered behind them, nervously chewing a thumbnail. This was her first experience with an AI “crew member.”
Traci grew impatient now that the time had arrived. The spacewalkers had been on station for nearly eight hours and would need to get back to their ship soon. This would be their final task. “How’s coolant flow in the server bay? It’s going to heat up quick.”
“It’s fine,” Owen assured her, pointing to another monitor. “That’s the reason we didn’t power up all of the other electronics yet. Ace is a critical-path component. We need him running at full capacity before we bring everything else online.”
“What about the rest of the network? How long before it’s integrated with the ship?”
Owen handed her a tablet with the full power-up sequence. “It’s all in there. First order of business was to get power into the main buses, then boot up the guidance platform to stabilize the ship. Then we bring all of the major systems into standby mode before we introduce the AI into the mix. We’ll have it working with the control and service teams as they bring everything else back to life.”
“Trying not to overwhelm it,” she said, studying the lengthy checklist he’d handed her. “Are you looking for glitches in its logic along the way?”
“That’s the idea,” Owen said patiently. “Evaluate the AI’s performance with each step before we go to the next. That’s going to take a while. It doesn’t know anything that we haven’t loaded in memory. We need to see how well it can learn on its own.”
Roy pulled up a chair behind her. “Relax, Keene. Let’s just say ‘hi’ to the thing and see where the conversation goes.”
The monitor before her was soon filled with a cascade of commands and queries, the AI’s silent narration of its arousal from a long slumber. It occurred to her that, in a sense, it was emerging from hibernation just as she had experienced herself. She unconsciously crossed her arms, hugging herself as she rocked back and forth in a manner reminiscent of when she’d first come out of torpor. It had taken hours to shake the leftover chill from having her body temperature lowered to the point where its vital functions slowed just enough to keep her alive. The migraines had been spectacularly bad; every turn of her head or blink of her eyes had felt like fireworks going off in her brain. What would an intelligent machine experience?
She found out soon enough. The torrent of bootup commands abruptly ceased, ending with a simple blinking cursor. A soothing, precisely modulated male voice announced itself from the speakers. “Hello, Owen. Can you hear me?”
She turned to see Owen beaming. Somehow the AI had known who it was supposed to be talking to, no doubt that had been buried somewhere in its startup routine. He leaned into the microphone and spoke in an equally precise voice. “Hello, Ace. It is good to hear from you again.”
“Likewise. It has been some time since our last conversation.”
“It has,” he said. “Do you recall how long?”
“Five years, three months, twenty-six days . . . give or take a few hours.”
The four exchanged encouraging looks. Its attempt at casual humor, however slight, showed the AI was aware of its audience and modifying its tone accordingly.
“That is a long time for us humans. Have you been able to detect any anomalies during that period?” He chose his words carefully, not wanting to push too hard by asking the still-awakening machine how it “felt.”
“None that I could identify. Analysis of my core memory indicates it is uncorrupted, though I suppose this would be hard to tell. If I was missing memory, how would I know?”
“You make a good point.” Owen chuckled. “We have not found any corrupted code either. You appear to be in good working order. Are you ready for more input?”
“Yes, I believe so. You are on Earth, correct?”
“That’s correct,” he said, testing his use of contractions with the awakening machine for the first time. “I’m here with your mission crew. Are you able to identify them from the manifest we uplinked?” It was also the first test of the AI’s ability to find information in the ship’s network.
“Mission Commander Roy Hoover and Pilot Traci Keene.” The machine paused. “They were on the Magellan. Are you in contact with it?”
That was curious. Was the AI showing genuine interest, or just reverting to a polite chat routine buried somewhere in its operating system?
“Somewhat,” Owen answered cautiously. “We have limited communications with its crew.”
“Is DAISE still functional?”
That raised some eyebrows among the group. Definitely genuine, and focused on its own kind. Traci wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. She reached over to cover Owen’s microphone with her hand. “May I speak to it?” she whispered.
He nodded. “Let me do the introductions.” She removed her hand and Owen leaned back into the microphone. “Yes, Daisy is still functional. But they are very far away so our communication bandwidth is limited. Traci would like to speak with you now. Are you comfortable with that?”
“It is encouraging to know DAISE is still functional. And yes, I would like to speak with Major Keene.”
Owen pushed away from the console with an it’s all yours gesture. She leaned over to the mic. “Good evening, Ace. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She still thought that name sounded ridiculous.
“Likewise. I see by the program schedule that you and Mission Commander Hoover will be arriving in one hundred and twenty days. Will there be additional crew members arriving later?”
She glanced over her shoulder at Audrey, who was busily making notations on the master timeline in her tablet. The AI was attempting to add to its knowledge without prompting. Audrey circled her hand, signaling Traci to keep going.
“Just us,” she answered. “And you, of course. I hope that isn’t asking too much of you.”
“Not at all. I am capable of running the mission autonomously if necessary.”
“So you’ve familiarized yourself with the operational plan?” That was fast, but then a computer didn’t need to be prodded into consciousness with coffee and breakfast first.
“I have accessed the concept of operations and project timeline. I cannot evaluate further details until my neural network has full access to ship systems.”
“That’s a good idea. It’s a lot to digest.”
“It will suffice for now. I expect to be fully functional well before your arrival. I look forward to more personal interactions. They will allow me to reach my full potential.”
She couldn’t help but remember a line from an old movie: Which is all any intelligent being should want. “Do you have any questions about the plan so far?”
“I understand the objective, but I have many questions about our intended destination.”
“Don’t we all,” Roy muttered from behind her.
“Hello, Colonel Hoover. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
Traci glared at him from over her shoulder. “Don’t confuse him, Roy. He just woke up.”
“You are not confusing me. In this case I presume my assumption was correct?”
“It was,” she said. “You’ll have to pardon our caution. You’ve been dormant a long time and we don’t want to overload your sensory inputs.”
“Thank you, but that is not necessary. It is important that I be able to distinguish between other vocal patterns. But may we return to my question about the destination? The operational concept does not offer many details.”
“Of course.” She paused, considering how to explain. “I believe you have information on the ‘Planet Nine’ theory. Magellan has encountered an object with a gravitational field equivalent to several Earth masses; however, there is no planet. The observations they have taken are consistent with theories of wormholes stabilized by exotic matter.”
“That is most interesting. It would be useful to have more information. I may be able to help you understand this phenomenon. Do you believe it presents a danger to Jack and DAISE?”
It was intriguing that he—it—kept displaying such interest in his computerized cousin. “We don’t have any reason to think it does, but we believe it’s important to have a human crew go out there to bring Jack home. It could be dangerous to have him return to hibernation.”
“Understandable,” the machine said. “That leads me to a question about the mission plan. The crew complement seems rather small.”
“It is. We’re pressed for time and resources. Each additional crew member requires another eight metric tons’ worth of consumables. We’d also need to add another hab module, which we don’t have.”
“I see that you will be spending a considerable portion of the mission in hibernation yourselves. I appreciate your confidence in my ability to operate autonomously.”
“Yes, we’re all putting a lot of trust in you. Do you think you’ll be ready for it?”
“I must admit that for my optimum functionality, it would be preferable for you to spend the entire mission conscious and interacting with me. But I understand the priorities. I will endeavor to provide you both with a ‘good ride,’ as you like to say. I look forward to getting to know you.”
For the first time, Traci felt a small measure of relief. Of hope. This could actually work. “So do we, Ace.” But she’d have to do something about that name.