The Oort Federation, page 11
Orlov smiled. “We rely on portals for virtually everything. Why not for landing?” His face took on a thoughtful look. “I’ll be happier when our ships are large enough to carry actual landing craft.” He smiled again. “One more thing—commence construction of a second ship—total secrecy. No one but the personnel working on it should know about the project.”
OORT CLOUD—JOHNNY OORT
Johnny Oort, as he had gotten used to calling himself, had refrained from melding with the Oort Mind for a long time, at least in human terms. Ever since his first contact with humans, when Braxton discovered the Oort Portals in ServerSky, he had become obsessed with the concept of individuality. He still interacted with the Oort, but he became increasingly drawn to humans and what they represented.
For a long time, he was the face of the Oort. All communication between Oort and human went through him. He got to know the human uploads well, and through them, their flesh-and-blood counterparts. Johnny Oort had no memory of his own flesh-and-blood existence—if he ever had one. That would have been so long ago that it would have been lost in the Oort digital archives.
Johnny Oort considered Daphne O’Bryan and Kimberly Deveraux his personal friends; Dale Ryan less so, but because of Dale’s relationship with both Daphne and Kimberly, Johnny Oort placed Dale inside his personal circle as well. Thorpe and Braxton—he corrected himself, eThorpe and eBraxton—occupied a special category. He wasn’t sure what to call it, highly respected professional colleagues perhaps, but that was too formal. Anyway, he felt close to them as well. Brad and Sally and their uploads, Culp and his guys—he knew and liked them, but he rarely interacted with them.
Ever since Johnny Oort had recognized his affinity to these humans, he had carried a dark secret. As time passed, this secret increasingly weighed on his conscience. Johnny Oort belonged to the Oort race. Since their first modern contact with humans, Johnny Oort had represented the Oort to humans. He was Oort, and in many ways, for humans, he was the Oort. Together, humans and Oort had stopped a massive invasion. That was good. Johnny Oort had no equivocation about that. Now, however, it appeared that humans might be preparing to bring death and destruction to the Asterians. For Johnny Oort and his deep, dark secret, that was unacceptable.
Johnny considered his options. Then he reached out to eBraxton.
“I know you constructed a safe haven, a hidey-hole, somewhere in ServerSky and another somewhere in the Oort Cloud.”
“Why do you ask?” eBraxton wanted to know.
“I need a safe shelter…”
“What for?” eBraxton asked.
“Will you trust me for a little while?” Johnny Oort was not yet ready to explain himself to eBraxton. “I need to climb off the grid for a bit, to isolate myself from the Oort.”
“Okay.” eBraxton gave him the necessary access codes.
Johnny Oort slipped through the laser pipe into eBraxton’s Oort Cloud hidey-hole. He scanned his surroundings carefully. There were sufficient ice thinsats to hold his consciousness completely, with sufficient room left over for several more entities, so long as they didn’t mind close quarters. Just as eBraxton had described, he found two inactivated portals, each capable of carrying an upload, a digital entity, but not something material. One terminated in the eating area of the Los Angeles condo belonging to Daphne, Kimberly, and Dale. The other connected to eBraxton’s GEO ServerSky hidey-hole.
Johnny Oort settled in for some heavy thinking. Like eThorpe and eBraxton, he was able to function at multiple levels on different tracks while concentrating on any one or several matters at one time. In this case, he put his entire focus on the matter at hand. To an outside observer, only a few seconds would have passed. For Johnny Oort, however, he emerged from his thought after several subjective days of intense concentration.
With an inner smile, he activated the portal into the Los Angeles dining area and passed through.
Chapter Eight
DENVER—PHOENIX COMPLEX
Dale stepped into the office shared by Sally and Brad. Sally was in the lab; Brad was at his desk. He looked up.
“Brad,” Dale said without preamble, “how quickly can you get me a dedicated Nanocosm?”
“Those things are pushing a billion phoenixes, you know. Why do you need a dedicated unit?”
“Yeah, they’re expensive, but we got the funds. I need one for my current project.”
“And that is?”
Dale grinned. “We’re moving the Link into the brain and establishing a nanobot microbiome controlled by the Link circuitry to regulate the body and the Link-body interface.” Dale sat on the corner of Brad’s desk and leaned toward Brad. “I need a dedicated Nanocosm that specializes in this space as opposed to stuff in Mars orbit or portal infrastructure, if you know what I mean.”
“This I gotta see!” Brad said with a lifted eyebrow. “You can do this?”
Dale nodded. “Talk with me in a month.”
Using the original Nanocosm that Sally and he had created, Brad could program the generation of a Nanocosm dedicated to the task Dale had described. It showed up in Dale’s Phoenix lab several days later. Dale and Daphne met in the lab with Kimberly, who was carrying Maxter.
“What if this doesn’t work?” Kimberly asked, holding Maxter close.
“We’ll sedate him and do a current backup,” Daphne said. “If anything goes wrong, we’ll simply clone a new Maxter and download his backup into the clone. He won’t know the difference.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Kimberly muttered.
“Hon, we’ve been doing this with millions of people for a long time now—it’s what Ogden is all about. You know that.” Daphne’s voice carried a bit of exasperation.
“I know, Daphne, but this is Maxter. He’s not just anybody.”
Maxter chirruped and jumped out of her arms onto the lab bench. He walked over to Daphne stiff-legged and rubbed her lab coat. Everybody chuckled, and the tension was broken.
“Okay, let’s do this,” Dale said.
Daphne sedated the tabby and attached leads to his skull. Several minutes later, Maxter’s essence rested in stasis inside a nearby electronic matrix.
“Remove the leads, Daphne,” Dale said, and then he attached a hose ending with a flexible cup over Maxter’s nose and mouth. He activated the Nanocosm.
Several million nanobots moved down the hose into Maxter’s brain and body. Within minutes, they had constructed and interfaced those Link elements that would automatically transmit Maxter’s coded essence via a circuitous path into a second electronic matrix on the lab bench. Simultaneously, other nanobots circulated throughout Maxter’s body, analyzing his microbiome and integrating themselves into a microbiome that would monitor and maintain Maxter’s health going forward. Moments later, the second matrix lit up, indicating internal activity. Dale scanned the indicators.
“That’s Maxter,” he said with a grin. “The integration is complete. Let’s revive the little guy.”
While Daphne wakened Maxter, Dale followed the matrix indicators carefully.
“We need to run one more test,” he said. “Let’s clone Maxter, download the real-time backup into the clone, and verify that everything is as it should be.”
This time, the cloning process was significantly more involved. Under the supervision of their new Nanocosm, the nanobots used Maxter’s sequenced DNA, the sequenced DNAs of all the standardized feline tabby microbiome elements, and the elements of the just-installed microbiome that the Nanocosm had linked to Maxter’s coded DNA.
Dried and fluffed, with the real-time essence downloaded, the cloned Maxter was indistinguishable from the original Maxter. This held true even when Dale compared the real-time backup of the cloned with Maxter’s real-time upload.
Without actually telling Kimberly what he was doing, Dale sedated and destroyed the cloned Maxter and its real-time backup, leaving only Maxter in Kimberly’s arms and his now continuously current backup in the electronic matrix on the lab bench.
“We’ll integrate Maxter’s backup into our Kuiper database,” Daphne said, kissing Kimberly gently, green eyes locked to blue. “He’s now your Forever Maxter.”
Later that day, after the girls had left, Dale located Max and put him through the same process. That evening, back in their shared Los Angeles condo, Dale placed a purring Max into Daphne’s arms, poured a glass of white wine for Daphne, and grabbed a beer for himself.
“I gave Max the treatment,” he said with a smile and a kiss. “You’ll want to integrate his backup into the database.”
Dale tossed a small, catnip-filled toy on the floor, but Max ignored it, preferring Daphne’s lap.
KUIPER BELT—OGDEN ENTERPRISES
“Where are you headed with this?” Dale asked Daphne as he verified the operational installation of their dedicated Nanocosm into the lab complex at Ogden Enterprises in the Kuiper Belt.
“Simple,” she said. “We need to scale up from Max and Maxter. We need to program the Nanocosm for human microbiomes. That’s got to be an entirely different complexity than small felines like Max.”
Max rubbed her leg upon hearing his name. As a rule, Max remained close to Daphne. From time to time, he would show up in the oddest remote locations, and he clearly knew his way around the Solar System through the portal network. Daphne did not believe for a moment, however, that Max actually understood what happened when he walked through a portal. For him, it was just a doorway into another room. Oddly enough, she found that she often thought of it in the same way.
When I step through the portal in our condo to here, she thought, I walk through a door but travel 500 AUs. She chuckled to herself. I never give it a thought anymore.
“We need to work from a template,” Dale said.
“What?” Daphne pulled herself out of her head. “Template…what do you mean?”
“You haven’t used the Nanocosm as much as I have. You tell it what you want in plain English—or any other language for that matter. It churns out the nanobot programs to accomplish that. Sometimes it asks questions. Sometimes it heads down a wrong path, and you have to pull it back.” Dale grinned. “The old-timers used to call it GIGO—Garbage in, garbage out. If you can give it some kind of template to start, the process usually goes better.”
Dale pulled up his own sequenced DNA into a holoimage.
“Instead of giving the Nanocosm general instructions for inserting a nanobot microbiome into a human, let’s give it specific directions for inserting a microbiome into me.”
“Well, aren’t you the self-centered scientist,” Daphne said with green eyes twinkling. Then she added, “But that makes sense.”
They tossed the plain language description around for a few minutes. Finally, Daphne threw her hands up in exasperation.
“You’re making it too complicated and technical, Dale.” She threw him a kiss. “Let’s try this.” She projected her paragraph into a holoimage.
Start with the Max program. Modify it for the attached human DNA sequence. Replace the feline microbiome with one suitable for the human brain and body so that the brain has complete voluntary control over all Link functions. Integrate the microbiome with the attached matrix.
“What do you think?” Daphne asked. “Will this work?”
“Let’s try it and see.”
The Nanocosm processed the information for several minutes. Then it sought clarification about the integration of brain and body.
“How do we differentiate between brain and body?” Dale asked.
Daphne considered the question for a minute. “Let’s just call it the body,” she suggested. “Let’s let the Nanocosm determine where the necessary circuitry should reside.”
A bit later, it wanted clarification of the word control.
“Let me try,” Daphne said. Then she told the Nanocosm, “Humans currently instruct a Link by depressing keys on a keypad or speaking vocally. A human should similarly instruct an integrated Link with thought instead of pad or voice. Those functions that relate to health and wellbeing should be under autonomous direction from the integrated Link, but the human should be able to insert voluntary control over these functions.”
The Nanocosm accepted Daphne’s explanation. Finally, it presented a series of holographic animations that displayed the added circuitry and indicated how the person would use the integrated Link.
“Shall we?” Daphne asked.
“Yep.”
About an hour later, the Nanocosm indicated it was ready to proceed.
“This is where the shit hits the fan,” Dale said.
Daphne agreed but said nothing.
“Why not, Dr. Fredricks?” Dale asked. “It’s perfectly safe…well, what I mean is that if something goes wrong, we know we can get back to where we started; that is with me standing here arguing with you.”
Intellectually, Fredricks knew Dale was right, but he still hadn’t allowed himself to be uploaded, not out of fear, he had told himself several times. He just wasn’t ready yet. He examined the holoimage of Dale’s protocol for the tenth time.
“What if the clone fails?” he asked. “What if the download fails?”
“We’ve done this millions of times,” Dale said. “Ogden has automated the process. Rejuvenations are happening by the thousands as we speak. You know this!”
Fredricks had to agree. Dale was correct, but they were talking about Dale, not some disembodied stranger, one of the billions that filled every habitable corner of the Solar System.
“I agree with Dale,” Daphne said earnestly. “We do an upload of Dale into a local matrix and put it in stasis. Then, we generate a clone and keep it sedated without a download. Finally, we run the nanobot microbiome installation protocol on Dale. If everything checks out, we destroy the clone and upload, and Dale carries on. If something goes wrong, we download the backup into Dale’s clone and activate it, and then we determine what happened and correct it. As far as Dale is concerned, the sedated body on the table is the result of a failed procedure.”
Fredricks looked at Dale with raised eyebrows.
“Is this how you see it?” he asked.
“Sure, and so do you.” Dale grinned. “I’ve worked with you long enough to know.”
“Give me a few minutes,” Fredricks said as he walked out of the lab to his office.
Once by himself, Fredricks sat quietly contemplating the Milky Way stretching across the dome, impossibly colorful and bright.
The world has changed since you first revived Thorpe, he told himself. You’re part of that change. In fact, you are responsible for much of what has changed. He let his mind drift for a few minutes, just gazing at the spectacle outside the dome. So, get with it! Do what you have to do!
The process was flawless. Dale awakened and immediately tested his Link control. He found that he knew what to do, as if he had memorized an instruction manual. He checked his real-time matrix.
“Looks to be working,” he said to no one in particular. “Can you integrate it into your database right away?” he asked Daphne.
Dale conducted several exploratory searches with his Link. He called up some papers, wrote some notes, and placed a call to Brad.
“Hey, Brad, I’m calling you through my integrated Link. This thing really works. I’m going to check it out for a week, and then we’ll make it available to everyone in the group.”
KUIPER BELT—OGDEN ENTERPRISES
“Any side effects?” Daphne asked Dale a week later in the office she shared with Kimberly and Fredricks. For the entire seven days, she had made sure that either she or Kimberly was within sight of Dale all the time. If anything went wrong, she wanted to nip it in the bud and reestablish Dale without the implant.
“Nothing that I can detect,” Dale said. “I have tried everything I can think of to break the implant, but it keeps on running—like the Energizer Bunny.”
“The what?”
“I was researching some material from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I came across this strange television ad.”
Daphne tossed her head and looked at him curiously.
“Television—what they had before holovision, basically a flat-screen image display in full color. Anyway, some company named Eveready sold small storage batteries. Their ads featured a small mechanical bunny operating on their batteries, moving along and beating a bass drum. Their ads showed the Energizer Bunny never quitting in the face of all the competition batteries failing. It became a cultural icon for never quitting.” Dale laughed. “Anyway, to the point…nope, no side effects. I think we should move forward.”
From the other side of the office, Fredricks chimed in. “No, we won’t!” He arose and strolled over to Dale and Daphne. “I reluctantly agreed to do the implant, and I agree that things are going well—much better than I had hoped. But one week simply isn’t sufficient time.” He placed an arm around Dale’s shoulders. “You could embolize tomorrow, or your brain could fry, or your nanobot microbiome could go on strike.”
Dale looked at him with astonishment. Daphne smiled inside. She had no doubt who would win this exchange. She remained silent.
“Seriously, Dale,” Fredricks continued, “I realize things are going well, and I agree that the longer they go well, the better are your odds. I still think it’s a crapshoot, though. Realistically, I would like to wait for at least six months, even a year.”
