The Universe - or Nothing Part 53

Epilogue

The networks of ma.s.s attractors that tethered the Extractor to Planet Pluto disengaged nine Earth centuries after construction began. Pluto contributed its...o...b..tal momentum to the launch.

In time the integrated drives of the most advanced propulsion thrusters took on the full load, and the dream of humankind was on its way to the Alpha Centauri star system, on schedule.

Scientists and technicians on The Solar System's Slingshot Control Center maintained constant real-time oversight of the Extractor's subsystems and structures through spunnel monitors. A convoy of robot deflectors and screens cleared the Extractor fleet's path of meteoroids, sand and rock swarms and s.p.a.ce debris. Hundreds of logistics robots crammed the station's cavernous bays, self-sustaining and programmed to activate sub-systems on schedule, deploy robotic specialists and service the machine during its voyage, and in perpetuity thereafter.

Maximum acceleration for almost two Earth decades increased the fleet's velocity to five percent speed-of-light, which it maintained for more than a Solar System Standard Century. Deceleration and vector adjustments took another three decades.

Alignment to major concentrations of potential sources, selection of a 'first phase' work site, calibration of instrumentation and activating its spunnel channels and monitors required still more.

Back along the Solar rim, the Collector remained linked to Planet Pluto for two decades following the Extractor's departure. Its schedule along Pluto's...o...b..t provided sufficient time for the Collector's transit to its permanent station along the rim, to track the Extractor's position via spunnel to refine details for integrated operations, and for positioning and calibrating the thousands of networks that coordinate the solar and interstellar arrays.

The citizens of the Solar community tuned in to witness the release of the Interstellar Spunnel Signal from the hand of the President of the newly formed United Nations of the Solar System. It would be the final signal to synchronize and activate the collective controls of the Extractor and Collector.

The President keyed the Signal.

Remote spunnel nodes and boosters along the route from the Solar System to Alpha Centauri monitored the Signal and the response. Rings of laser arrays along the edge of the Extractor's hopper flashed alive and focused their beams on a large, slowly tumbling planetoid hundreds of kilometers across its minor dimension.

Sensors, a.n.a.lyzers, siphons and beam-guides paralleled the lasers' signals along an incandescent column of plasma from the dissolving planetoid into the Extractor's processes and, when ready, into the hopper. The truncated apex of the Extractor's teleport gate cone glowed red, then violet, and thirty meters of its length disappeared into its new hypers.p.a.ce home.

The invisible nozzle hurled a concentration of elemental substance across hypers.p.a.ce to its sister station four and a half light-years distant.

The first sign of incoming was a churning, expanding ma.s.s of violet bubbles around the apex of the Collector. s.h.i.+fting colors as it cooled and solidified, the ma.s.s transformed into a huge brown globe. The globe separated from the nozzle and drifted off, replaced by another mushrooming bubbling ma.s.s at the nozzle's tip.

A fleet of robot tugs clamped mag-beams on the free-floating globes and hauled them off. Another fleet of giant s.p.a.ce tugs moved into position for the next gift of crude but treasured substance teleported across interstellar s.p.a.ce from a distant star.

The cornucopia was in flow and humankind's first outbound and inbound highways to the greater universe were complete and working.

Afterwords

An overview of the times prepared by Level 2 students, Luna Middle School, based on records and commentaries in the official archives of The Interstellar Mining and Teleport System.

(Reference: Index, Capsule V67 The Interstellar Historian, Third Millennium, Interstellar Era.)

In the centuries that followed humankind's giant leap to Luna, scientists, engineers and scholars in almost all of Planet Earth's disciplines probed ever deeper into s.p.a.ce. Explorers studied and charted the surfaces, depths and atmospheres of each of the Solar System's bodies, and scrutinized the dynamics and const.i.tuents of s.p.a.ce matter out to the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. They ventured into the void beyond Pluto's aphelion for hundreds of millions of kilometers -- although not yet the stars.

The first landing on Luna in Year 1969 of the then Common Era was judged to be among humankind's grandest achievements. At the Luna landing's Tercentenary a universal calendar was ordained to commemorate the Event as New Year's Day, Year 0, formally beginning humankind's Interplanetary Era.

By then, populated Moon and Mars bases were well established. Construction cadres had ventured into and beyond the Asteroids. Their experiences, surface and strata tests and studies influenced the selection of sites for mining operations and strategic outposts along the s.p.a.ce frontiers.

Advance construction battalions built basic habitat and, having attained 's.h.i.+rt sleeve' environments, conceptualized, planned, gathered local materials, and designed and built infrastructure and industries that, in time, blossomed into enormous encapsulated cities, social orders, cultural adjustments and civilizations.

Explorers became teachers and mentors. Initially in Earth orbit, later in lunar s.p.a.ce and on Luna itself, they guided settlers in developing new lifestyles and colonizing skills, and showed them how to wrest and refine usable elements and minerals from nearby sources. They devised and tested methodologies to convert crude s.p.a.ce matter into forms with which to create and integrate structures, and manufacture and operate machines and networks that would sustain surface and contiguous s.p.a.ce and inter-satellite and interplanetary navigation and logistics systems.

The emigrants procreated and populated their cities in the void. Their disparate ancestries blended through a natural vitality that accelerated human evolution so as to survive in a radically new environment. In so doing, they turned away from traditional conventions still deeply ingrained in their common species. Adjusting over time to the novel experience of s.p.a.ce, they conceived new ways or adapted their ancient qualities and prospered in wholly enclosed artificial worlds. Organ modifications, genetic engineering and cloning gave impetus to human transformation.

Instinctively, humankind-in-s.p.a.ce prepared for an eventual voyage to the stars.

At the close of the first interplanetary millennium that shaped and launched The Great Migration to s.p.a.ce the original emigrants' progeny had become an indigenous population. Five centuries into the Interplanetary Era's second millennium the Solar System included more than five hundred populated colonies and outposts, and twice that number of robot stations for interplanetary and inter-satellite navigation, communication relay, and s.p.a.ce rescue. Populated by humans and their robots, colonies extended from the voids above Mercury and Venus through the Asteroids, the satellites of the gas planets, to Planet Pluto.

As colonies multiplied and spread across the vast interplanetary realm the solar community became impatient with time consumed in normal point-to-point s.p.a.ce communications and transport.

The excessive transmission and portage time was especially irritating in communications, s.h.i.+pment of priority cargo, and human travel across distances from bodies...o...b..ting along on opposite sides of the Sun. Hypers.p.a.ce technology solved the problem.

"Spunnels" in the public's jargon, came into being, the term compressed from the phrase "hypers.p.a.ce tunnels," a universal phenomenon once suspected and eventually confirmed. In the centuries preceding The Great Migration the phenomenon had been generally referred to as a wormhole, an archaic and irrelevant expression, even in those ancient times.

Spunnel networks reduced transmission time between the most widely separated points in the system from hours to real-time. Successful in communications, scientists and engineers concentrated on the technological leap from spunnel communications to spunnel teleportation, a capability urgently and clearly essential to move humans, machines, and raw materials across interplanetary distances.

The flood of emigrants to s.p.a.ce colonies and outposts exceeded tens of thousands each year over several centuries, leaving behind a still over-crowded Earth that had long since cried 'enough'. Among the migrants were artisans and technicians, minimally to highly-skilled administrators, sociologists, teachers, scientists and engineers and, scattered among them, contemporary philosophers who preached the metaphysical. Together, they represented all of Earth's peoples and a cross-section of their cultures.

Technology, however, imposed constraints. The insatiable appet.i.te for metals, minerals, rare earths and other nonrenewable substances increased inexorably. They remained the foundation for the Solar System's industries, driven by the constant clamor of indulgent lifestyles. Fully aware that vital minerals and other substances were beyond replenishment from within the Solar System, the solar community nevertheless squandered its rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng resources.

In time, reserves of nonrenewable resources dropped from residue to gleanings. Recycling, salvage, ever-deeper mine shafts and tunnels, repeated sweeps of the Earth's sea beds and planetary and satellites' crusts, trenches, beds and craters offered insufficient returns. Scouring the Asteroid Belt, sifting the Kuiper-Oort regions, and intense compet.i.tions for subst.i.tutes provided inadequate and merely temporary relief. The solar community's population, on Earth and in s.p.a.ce, had exploded to more than fourteen billion people. The search for substances to support humankind's needs ranged throughout; there were no more sources, nor were there sanctuaries.

Certainly, there would not be enough for voyages to the stars.

At long last, humankind confronted its reality. Net yields from nonrenewable reserves, residues and subst.i.tutes had dwindled until exhaustion was certain and a timeline predictable. The choice among grim options could no longer be postponed.

In the end, there were two:

-- Remain in place, ration, recycle and redistribute minerals, metals, ores and other usable substances and subst.i.tutes with Draconian discipline, and take the consequences, or

-- Chance the most awesome venture in humankind's long history: reach out to a distant star and tear from it the raw matter that would preserve and perpetuate the grandeur of the human experience.

The second option would be the ultimate gamble: winning would bring the cornucopia sought throughout the ages. Failure, even at an early stage, would dissipate what little reserves remained. Vitality drained, humankind would slip back into the pits and the mud from which it had so laboriously climbed.

The decision was to reach for the stars.

The Interstellar Mining and Teleport Program

The Objective: To draw from Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, 4.35 light-years distant, its minerals, metals, elements and whatever useful substances could be moved across s.p.a.ce, and store them nearby in the Solar System, accessible to all humankind.

The Task: Increase the Solar System's spunnel range, capability and capacity to teleport matter across interstellar s.p.a.ce in a continuous flow and in sufficient quant.i.ties to satisfy the purpose of the Objective;

Construct and dispatch an advance fleet of drone scouts to the Alpha Centauri star system at the earliest possible time to survey, a.n.a.lyze and report via spunnel on the availability, locations and accessibility of resources specified generally in the Objective;

Concurrently, design, construct and position an interstellar spunnel portage system consisting of two terminals, each of which would include an integral, fully self-sufficient facility for command-and-control, self-service and repair, logistical and other operations essential to its unique mission. Designate the terminal at 'star'