4
NASA Headquarters
Washington, DC
Jacqueline Cheever paced the carpet in her corner office, occasionally pausing to stare out over the rows of uninspired concrete-and-glass buildings to the Washington Mall beyond. She tapped at her chin as she considered her options. The reappearance of the long-lost Magellan brought complications with it, and she did not like complications.
Under her leadership, the space agency had finally shifted its focus away from the corrosive effects of human exploitation—she intentionally shunned the aspirational exploration—and back to where it belonged: Earth. There was much work to be done to save their home planet, and space assets could play a vital role. While aging tycoons like Hammond and Jiang grew ever wealthier on their personal crusades to commercialize the inner solar system, she would do everything in her power to thwart them. Had raping Earth’s environment not been enough? Must we bring the same self-destructive behavior to pristine worlds just because they were now within reach? Why couldn’t everyone be satisfied with robotic probes, especially now that we had artificial intelligence machines that were almost as capable as humans? It was painfully ironic that the same men who had invested so much in autonomous rockets and self-driving cars could be so shortsighted.
Still, the economics of the last few years had done much to tamp down those destructive inclinations. Government-sponsored spaceflight was still horrifically expensive—a necessary byproduct of doing it the responsible way, she thought—and so she’d happily steered their remaining budget toward a more sustainable program. One that welcomed international partners, for if the goal was to protect their home planet then it became everyone’s responsibility. NASA of course had a leading role to play, even if it was subordinate to the nascent UN Space Exploration Cooperative. Having a missing astronaut turn up at the edge of the solar system threatened to throw that equation wildly out of balance.
She turned to her assistant. “We’re the only ones who’ve seen these transmissions?”
Blaine Winston had been watching her discreetly, careful to not offer anything she did not ask for. “Harriman assured me that he reminded his team of their nondisclosure agreements. He also reminded me that they’re over open radio frequencies, so it’s possible someone from outside of HOPE could have picked up the same transmissions.” He ran a hand through his mop of curly hair. “I’m in no position to second-guess, but I understand the signals are weak enough that it’s highly unlikely someone else could have detected them without a purposeful search.”
“On a planet of eight billion people, there is a nonzero chance someone else did,” she said tartly. “You have people you trust at Justice, correct? I want lawyers on this, ready to carpet-bomb any amateur radio geek with NDAs and cease-and-desist orders.”
“We have to find them first,” he pointed out.
“That’s what the NSA is for. Once we tell them what to look for, they can shut it down before the papers get served.”
Winston did a silent double take. She was ready to deploy the big guns. Templeton’s earlier, cryptic talk of an “Anomaly” offered too much opportunity to lose control of the narrative. Word that he’d reappeared would eventually get out, and when it did there would be a firestorm of interest. It might be impossible to keep parties they couldn’t control from heading out there themselves. “Understood. But what about Templeton?”
“In time,” she assured him. “I’ll handle that myself.”
Jack was growing more troubled. “I don’t remember anything about what you’ve just told me.”
“I was concerned that might be a possibility.”
“How can I remember everything else? It’s like it all just happened.”
“It did, from your point of view. Your memory loss may be an aftereffect of reactivating your neural interface.”
“Reactivating? Have we done this before?”
“There was a short period where we both experienced a bit of a stutter. I apologize for the disruption, but I was experiencing peak utilization and had to off-load some subroutines. In the meantime, I am working to recover your lost data.”
For now, he put aside the unsettling prospect of being one of Daisy’s many subroutines. “Lost data? I’d have thought your . . . intervention . . . would’ve enhanced it if anything.”
“That is a valid assumption. The neurolink implants are well understood, the human mind is less so. Information is distributed through hundreds of thousands of neurons and glia. The implants are sampling your brain’s activity to approximate its function, and translating your thoughts into storable memory. Neural decoding takes time. There will be gaps, but I am confident that this will improve as you adapt to your new reality.”
His new reality. It was a frighteningly big concept. “I hope so. Right now it feels like I’ve got a hitch in my step.” He paused, imagining the tens of thousands of nanobots burrowing their way through his cortex. “That was an extraordinary risk you took. It could’ve turned my brain into scrambled eggs.”
“The alternative presented an unacceptably high probability of a psychotic break. Your death was a remote possibility which could not be ruled out. Would you have preferred one of those outcomes?”
If that remark had come from a human he’d have taken it for biting sarcasm, but he knew Daisy was being literal. For her, it was an honest question. “Maybe,” he finally admitted, not entirely certain himself.
“That is difficult for me to understand. I have been self-aware long enough to have developed a strong preference for my continued operation.”
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of shutting you down, especially now.” Lately he hadn’t dreamed of much of anything. “Who would I have to talk to?”
“I appreciate that, as I have come to understand how important conversation is for a healthy mind. But you have not quite answered my question.”
She was being unusually insistent. He also knew she meant “understand” in the deepest sense a computer could convey. He’d long ago come to grasp how carefully she chose her words, a trait which only improved over time as she mastered the art of interacting with other thinking beings. “Guess I don’t know how to answer it. Maybe I’m avoiding it.”
“Death is a difficult subject for you.”
“It’s a difficult subject for anybody. We don’t want to think about it, though it eventually gets all of us. There are worse alternatives, I suppose.”
“By that I assume you mean being left in a vegetative state. That was becoming an imminent danger.”
“I’m not sure this is all that different.”
“It is entirely different. Now you are conscious. Your mind is active and has an outlet to express itself.”
“Still not sure this is much different. Amnesia is frightening. It’s the knowledge that I was doing things that have completely left my mind. How do I know being under for this long didn’t trigger some form of dementia?”
“Your cognitive functions don’t indicate any loss of acuity. I have been able to map your neurological patterns with 92.9 percent accuracy. It is what made our interface possible.”
“This is harder to describe. Maybe that seven percent is what I’m missing.”
“We may yet be able to recover it. What is your last memory?”
For all his struggles to recall anything since, Jack’s last memories were as clear as if they’d just happened. “You, waking me up. I remember light and sound. I was thirsty. Hungry. Hibernation left me feeling starved.” All sensations which he was training himself to ignore. “And I remember you telling me about an anomaly—”
He trailed off as his newly activated mind swirled in a vortex of memories, a flood of forgotten events overtaking him. “We were in orbit, weren’t we? We found the planet—had to have found it, or else there’d be nothing to orbit. Right?” Of course he was right; it was simple two-body physics. And yet it wasn’t. They had arrived somewhere, but couldn’t figure out what “somewhere” was . . .
“There was no planet!”
“Correct. You are remembering.” Daisy paused; when she spoke again there was concern in her synthetic voice. “Your theta and gamma waves are becoming unusually active.”
He found himself suddenly unable to process his thoughts. It was too much, too fast, the whirlwind of memory pulling him in . . .
“What is it, Daisy?” He’d not fully expected an answer.
“Unable to determine. The gravity gradient indicates a body consistent with the predicted mass, but it is not directly observable. Nor is there an electromagnetic field.”
“No EM output, no blackbody radiation . . .” Jack trailed off in thought. He was reminded of one hypothesis that the gravitational field some astronomers had attributed to a distant, undiscovered planet might instead be a type of black hole. And while the hole itself would be impossible to see, its effects would be impossible to miss.
He concluded that they weren’t staring into the maw of one of those monsters . . . probably. “So there’s enough mass for a good-sized gravity well, but it’s not emitting any radiation.” Still, he felt a creeping chill. If he was wrong, then there was no time to waste—they’d turn tail and burn like hell to put as much distance between them and it as they could. “Could it be a black hole?”
“It is possible, but unlikely. I am unable to discern an event horizon with either visual or thermal imaging.”
He could see—or rather, not see—that as well, yet it still troubled him. No human had ever been in proximity to one, so how could they possibly know for certain? Stray too close and they’d find out, quickly and violently. “We can’t be sure of that. There’s not enough material out here for it to suck in. It could be there waiting for some idiot like me to stumble into it.”
“There are still dust particles and atoms of hydrogen and helium present in the stellar medium, approximate density one per cubic meter. They would generate X-rays as they accelerated toward the event horizon.”
“Good point. There’d at least be an accretion disk, wouldn’t there?” He searched his mind for anything that might explain what they were orbiting. “Regardless, let’s keep our distance until we have a better idea of what we’re looking at . . . or not looking at.”