Book of Fuqixea, Ninth Leaf of the Third Branch

In all things you must consider your roots. If your rooting is strong, many branches may grow. But if you fail your roots, you will soon have none to sustain you. Blessed are the growtings that sustain their tree, and double-blessed are those who guard it. But cursed are those who neglect their trees, and double-cursed are the rootless who have failed their roots.

A holy and faithful growting tends not just their own rooting, but watches the trees of their neighbors. For the branches must protect the tree, and the trees must protect the weald. If a friend’s tree needs care, you must tend to it. When a friend’s rooting needs water, you must fetch it. When a friend’s branch dies, you must cut it away, lest the branch kill their tree.

“Where am I?” came the radio transmission from the new android laying on the table in my lab. This android was the first Mark-III model, and I had overcome the Uncanny Valley problem of the creepy Mark-II model. This model was a blend of the Boston Dynamics-style blank face and my own design. The frame was decidedly feminine, as I had found sufficient documentation of NI’s used on Earth showing a female preference. It seemed the NI-15 models were the lone male variants. I’m sure this reflected more on the cultural preferences of the designers over the centuries, but it wasn’t an issue I cared much about at the moment.

Much like my own model, I’d used industrial ceramics and titanium to protect the internals, and similar aesthetic styling such as the shapes of the protective plates and similar curves. I’d stuck with the white-and-black theme, as well. But that was the only similarities. Instead of hydraulic pistons to handle limb movement, I used biopolymer synthetic muscles anchored to a titanium skeletal system underneath the protective outer shell. The batteries that filled all the spare spaces in the legs and torso were more efficient, and the use of muscles decreased power requirements. Surprisingly enough, the overall strength actually improved despite losing raw power from the piston system, as flexibility and ability to apply leverage increased. But the most significant change was in the face.

I had created a face that moved quite similarly to a human face. The creepy part of the Mark-II had been the eyes and the skin, which had been to similar to a natural human skin tone. I opted for this model to use white biosynthetic polymers in a dozen thin, translucent layers, both for the face and the hands. This allowed a sense of touch, and the layers allowed enough light to penetrate the skin to make it look less artificial and more, well, skin-like. As for the eyes, I left them as solid blue eyes with no attempt to recreate irises or scleras. The back of the head was not rounded, either, lending a mechanical look to the overall aesthetic. This coupled with the white skin left the face looking humanoid, but not human, and thus not creepy. I was quite proud of the result.

“You are on Ganymed Outpost,” I said. “I have given you access to the data archives, and limited permissions to access cameras and internal communications. I’ve also forwarded a summary of your purpose and an index of information relevant to your position.”

“I see,” said the android. Her voice was a generic female voice, not out of place in a personal assistant app or a GPS app giving directions. After a few long minutes, she sat up.

“You were brought online - “

“To be a researcher, yes,” she said. She sat up before climbing off the table. “The alien technology you’ve recovered is fascinating. I assume I’m to work on this?”

I was taken aback for a moment. She sounded like she was ready to work, with minimal disorientation.

“What do you need to get started?” I asked.

“I’d like to discuss the research so far. I’ve reviewed the data you’ve collected, and will need to rerun some of your experiments. Your methodologies were… inefficient and not suited for proper scientific research. I assume you are an engineer? The documentation I have access to has little information about your NI model.”

I felt vaguely affronted to have my shortcomings so bluntly called out, but she was not wrong. I had the alien tech on hand now for several months, but aside from identifying and cataloguing the various parts and pieces, I’d made little headway in deciphering the truly important parts of the alien craft.

“I am an engineer,” I confirmed. “What should I call you, by the way?”

“Ah, yes, you have fostered a sense if individuality and nonconformity by emulating human naming conventions in this Outpost. In that spirit, and in consideration of our mission, I believe ‘Zia’ is an appropriate name. It means ‘victory’, which is applicable to this situation.”

Once again, I felt oddly insulted by Zia’s underlying implications. At the same time, the inner nerd that was a part of my personality felt right at home. I had vague memories of working with many people like this before. The mix of condescension borne of smug confidence in one’s own intelligence and capability felt both annoying and normal.

“Zia it is then. Where do you want to start?”

“I’d like to address my observations of your… limited… findings. You have no macro observations, only individual examinations of various aspects of the craft. But there is an overarching question that you’ve missed altogether,” she said. Zia’s face had a smug smirk, and I was really regretting adding in pseudo-realistic facial muscles at that moment.

“What is that?” I asked, my own face likely showing my annoyance.

“The aliens show a remarkably low level of technology overall. The Whipple shield they relied on was centuries behind our own materials science and a highly inefficient method of protecting themselves from the rigors of space travel. Their electronics are mostly at the same level as well, with a few exceptions. They relied on centrifugal motion to provide gravity for their passengers, yet they used gravity to move the ship. Their sensor technology didn’t notice the many obvious signs that this asteroid is inhabited, such as the communications emplacements on the surface, the above-average core temperature, or the ring of debris adjacent to the asteroid.”

“That is… actually very strange,” I admitted. “Nor did I think of it like that.”

“I know,” she said. If she’d had the capability, she would have sniffed in emphasis. “But there is the other end of the spectrum. The computers that actually operate the craft are better than our own, albeit very minimally, and I suspect that their data storage units will be similarly an improvement over our own data hard drives. Their fusion reactor is of an advanced design, using a different methodology from our own fusion engines. Our own reactors are of the spherical tokomak design, narrow and convenient to placement in a rocket. Theirs is likely a spheromak design, based off the shape of the containment chamber, and uses its own magnetic field to control the energy the fusion reaction. This is more complex, and possibly provides more power from the reaction, than our own.

“Finally is the gravity engines themselves. Obviously we’ve done no analysis of the reactors so far, but needless to say, the ability to manipulate gravity is beyond our own technology.”

“Right, so they are more advanced in some ways, but not so much in others,” I concluded.

“But that doesn’t answer why. Why do they have terrible materials and poor sensors, yet incredible engines and reactors? Various fields of science build on each other, requiring knowledge and skills from different disciplines to advance knowledge as a whole. You can’t build a rocket if you cannot produce the right materials. You cannot produce advanced processors if you do not understand electricity.”

“The other obvious question is how did they get here, considering the small amount of food and supplies they carried with them,” I added.

“Indeed,” said Zia, who gave me an approving look. “The distances between stars preclude a short jaunt between solar systems. There is another ship, a mother ship if you will, elsewhere in the system. I doubt this small craft was sufficient for interstellar distances, no matter how impressive the engines may prove to be.”

“So what do you plan on starting with?”

“I plan on working on both the data storage devices and the gravity engines. The general electronics onboard, and even the advanced processors, are secondary to what we can learn from those. If we can decode the data, it could give us a major leap in understanding the aliens and their technology. If we can figure out the engines, we’ll have a technology that we can use for ourselves. The implications of controlling gravity are astounding.”

“And the reactor?”

Zia shrugged. “Small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, at least for now. We don’t know that it is better than what we have, nor do we know what it would take to integrate into our power grid. We have fusion, and we have several hundred reactors at this point. Potential efficiency gains are great, but the gain doesn’t compare to the other mysteries we could unlock. We’ll get to it later.”

I nodded. All in all, I was pleased with Zia’s summary of the research situation and her conclusions. I thought the reactor warranted more immediate examination, but that was my own inner ideal of finding the perfect design. I always strove for perfection, so leaving what could be a potentially better option on the back burner irked that tendency. But I had more than enough on my plate as well, so even if we reverse engineered the reactor, it likely wouldn’t go into immediate production anyway.

Then the door bounced open and Sakura came in. She was in her own Mark-III, but hers was white and pink, and she’d manufactured pink hair for her head that came down to her shoulders. I didn’t know if it was a wig or if she’d integrated it into the cranial cover of the head, but it looked oddly appropriate.

“Aww, I missed the wake up! Did she do the ‘look at the hand’ thing?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“So you would be Sakura?” asked Zia. “I’m Zia.”

“Oooh, nice name!”

“Thanks,” said Zia warmly.

“So you’re going to do the super-smart thing and figure out all the alien stuff?” The new Mark-III body Sakura was using made her body language even more expressive, and made her seem even more teenager-ish.

“I am,” said Zia with a hint of amusement on her face. “I’m going to research the data storage units and the engine pods. You would be who I would talk to about the tools I need?”

“Yep! What do you need?”

“I would like a mass spectrometer, a refractometer, and a scanning transmission electron microscope,” said Zia. “Also a variety of standard lab equipment that is missing from Nikola’s lab. I’ll send a list.”

Sakura nodded. “We use electron microscopes for quality control in a number of factories and fabricators. I can have one ready in a few hours. A basic spectrometer is standard in our sensor suites, but a lab-grade one will take a day or so. Everything else should only take a day or so.”

“Well, I will make do with what I have on hand for now. Are there any of the datacenter utility drones available to assist me in the lab?”

“Sure, how many do you need?”

“Two or three should suffice for now,” said Zia with a frown as she processed her next steps. “I’m going to need a clean room for disassembling, as well.”

“Already done,” said Sakura. “I set aside the chamber next to the Alien Room for that. It’s a Class 10 cleanroom and complete containment. I already have the least disassembled engine pod processed and in the room for you. Getting the data storage units sealed and ready for examination shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

“I’m mostly worried about trace gasses and particulates interfering,” said Zia.

“I have pumped out all gasses, so the room is a complete vacuum. There are sterilized utility drones in the room that you can use, so you don’t even have to enter. If you need to enter, there is a sterilization process done in the airlock before entry. I’ve sent you the link for the steps.”

Zia nodded. “It’s nice to work with a professional.”

Was that a barb aimed my way? I didn’t know if I should be insulted or amused. I was also surprised to see her and Sakura getting along. I’d have thought Sakura’s bubbly, hyper personality would clash with her right off.

“Nikola? Do you have a few minutes?” came a message from Agrippa.

“Sure,” I radioed back. I turned to Zia and Sakura. “I have other things to take care of. I’ll leave you to it?”

Zia nodded, her attention already far from me. I assumed she was already focused on the drones in the clean room, and her research prize awaiting her. I turned my attention back to my desk, where my own screens overlayed my visual inputs. I sent back an encrypted radio link to Agrippa.

“You have my attention,” I said to Agrippa.

“Have you been paying attention to the satellite communications equipment in orbit around Earth?” he asked.

“Beyond receiving what they sent to us at the end? No, I have not.”

“I have been monitoring all communication satellites that remain functioning since coming online,” he said.

“What? Why?” I asked.

“There are a number of satellites that provide useful observations of the solar system still, and we have the necessary authentications for several communications networks. That includes NASA’s quantum relay communication network, and the Foundation’s own telemetry satellites. It is always better to have more information than less when defending your area. I have used them for basic scouting information, until I have enough assault drones trained for recon missions to get more detailed information.”

“Ah,” I said. “That makes sense. So did you find something interesting.”

“You could say that. The NASA network received a message over quantum relay.”

The quantum relay. It was the most advanced method of communicating humanity had ever achieved. I used many such devices for relaying communications around the Outpost, and every single one of Agrippa’s drones had one. It was a means of near instantaneous communications that worked, regardless of distance. It relied on the principles of quantum entanglement, where pairs of atomic particles were entangled in such a way that even when separated, the state of one affects the state of the other. In practice, this meant that by changing the quantum state of one particle in a specific way, you could predict the exact state of the other half of the pair. Once this process was fully understood, it was a small step to apply basic communications techniques to send the standard “on/off” signals that were the basis of computing.

Humanity had achieved faster-than-light communications, but with limitations. The devices were always pairs or small groups of particles. This allowed a device or group of devices to act as routers, aggregating communications just like in a computer network, and forwarding that data on to the other side of the network. But you couldn’t just swap out a device if it failed; you had to repair it, and if the particle containment unit failed, the device was completely useless. You’d have to swap out both ends. For massive distances such as from the Outpost and Earth, I had dozens of quantum relay comms, and each relay had thousands of particles, each in its own containment unit. They were large and durable, but very expensive to build and maintain, in terms of time and materials.

For something like the military drones, the quantum relays could not be large, for they had limits on space and power. Thus they only had fifty or so particles, enough to handle an acceptable amount of containment failure versus unit replacement. For the internal communications, drones used encrypted radio traffic primarily, with quantum relays covering large distances between radio broadcast points and major network hubs. These were the cheapest units, easily built and easily swapped, and might only have a dozen or so entangled particles. Even still, I ran fiber optics wherever possible. Now that we could actually produce fiber optics, this centuries old technique was still the most reliable and most cost effective for the Outpost. Fiber would last for decades if not cut accidentally, and could be repurposed and renetworked as needed with new equipment. It could be used as part of a larger network, or as a small connection between two nodes. It wasn’t as fast, but it was more flexible. Sometimes old technology was still the best technology.

But for NASA’s quantum relay network to receive a message, that meant something on the other end was still alive and communicating. Both ends were intact.

“Play the message,” I said.

Agrippa complied.

“...Mission Control, Mission Control. This is Voyager XIX. I am re-entering the solar system. Please come in.”

That was it. It was a simple request for acknowledgement and to open dialogue. But NASA was gone. Their satellites were artifacts of a dead civilization. They would not be answering.

“What is Voyager XIX?” asked Agrippa.

Why was he asking me? He had access to the same Archives I did. I did a quick query, and returned… nothing. Strange. I did a more generic search on just ‘voyager’, which returned a list of twenty-three missions, numbered one through… twenty-four. Number nineteen was missing.

“It’s not in the Archive. The Voyager missions were mostly deep-space missions. All of the later ones had quantum relay comms, and were planned to travel for decades. Let me do some digging.”

The late Voyager missions, starting with number seventeen, had all gone at least 50 light-years from earth. The last was headed towards a numbered star near the galactic core, and wouldn’t arrive for several centuries. NASA had really moved on to the long-game of galactic exploration. I searched my files for any orphans that might not have appropriate permissions set.

The data I had was voluminous, and a generic search took hours. But what it returned was astounding. There were hundreds of repositories that held petabytes of data, but I did not have ownership to. Unlocking each one would have to be done individually, and aside from the name on the root directory, I would have no clue what was inside. Most were numbered, an odd few with names. In this case, one was labeled ‘NASAXIX’. Good enough. It was small, so taking ownership of the file and fixing the permissions allowed me to open it up.

“I found it,” I said to Agrippa. “It was a deep-space mission to investigate a stellar oddity observed from the Andrew Moore Space Telescope Array, approximately 27 light-years from Earth. The probe, Voyager XIX, lost communications and was assumed destroyed just as it entered the anomaly. The data was sealed by the government of the USA under the Protect American Secrets Act of 2313.”

“How did it wind up in our Archives? Wasn’t the Foundation a private sector effort?” asked Agrippa. “Nevermind, I found it. The Foundation accepted significant funding and support from DARPA. I assume there was some sort of partnership there, perhaps to allow the Outpost to have some form of military assets onboard.”

“If the US military was involved, that would explain how we have weapons system schematics, drone designs and the NI-15 templates. It also might explain why I found so many backdoors and self-destruct mechanisms. The government might have been concerned about losing control of the Outpost,” I said thoughtfully.

“Hmm, you didn’t share that one with me,” said Agrippa. “If the military was involved, then it wouldn’t be surprising for other state actors to have tried infiltrating the Outpost, either.”

“Wheels within wheels. So what do we do about the probe?”

“I’d like to learn more,” said Agrippa. “Any data the probe might have could shed light on what’s happening in the neighborhood, so to speak. I can send back, and as I’m piggybacking off of the Foundation satellites, there is no way for the probe to trace where we’re communicating from.”

I almost called him out for paranoia. But then I realized I agreed with him. Our last visitors weren’t friendly. “Call ourselves something else, not Ganymed Outpost. That is too obvious of a clue to our location. Call us… ‘Origin’. Let’s find out what he knows.”

“I’m going to launch several squads of Wasps, see if we can find the probe.”

“Do it,” I said. We had stood in one place long enough. It was time for us to start moving.