New Math 11-9-2018

We kicked off the discussion. Observer was reviewing the sensor anomalies that we had seen, the Graeae then discussing our technological limitations to him, and then Hera asking some questions that even made me uncomfortable.

“The issue here,” I stated flatly, “is that all of us from Sol have the same level of technology. The only reason we have a leg up is thanks to the data that you provided us, Observer. There is no way that they are from Sol.”

I was answering some speculation from Observer about the anomalies being stealth craft from the rogue Arks.

“The rest of humanity doesn’t have that data, so at most, they can create technologies based on the crystals. Whatever it or they are, I seriously doubt they are human. We need a safe port, so we can fully repair our exteriors, upgrade the sensors, and we need to figure out a way to mine some Thorium.” Hera was not looking at me with happy thoughts as I continued.

“Because we keep seeing these blips, we know there is something there. That is why I want us to figure out what they are. Can we even handle the repairs at the speeds we are going?”

Hephaestus entered the room.

“Yes, we can! You actually gave us the answer to that, Miss Jax.” He said. His spoke slower and with a lower pitch than I thought it would be, each word wrapping up the listener in what can only be described as a friendly hug.

A screen flashed in front of me. Hanging in the air was the schematic of the MiK33 Construction Drone.

“Well shit, those will actually work in the Real as well? I thought you were all just blowing smoke up our asses.”

“Yama asked us to verify every schematic created for its ability to be made in the real world. This one caught my attention immediately. It can be used to build.” That voice had the comfort of bourbon and leather built into it.

The three crones were next. Each speaking the sentence in the same words at different frequencies, each harmonizing with the others.

“Your sensors packages brought you to our attention. Helmets with full suites built in using a smaller footprint. Perhaps looking at our sensors schematics, you can find a way to improve them.”

Observer spoke up, shattering the ambiance created between Hephaestus’s smooth rolling words and the three crone’s beautiful harmony.

“Improve easy. How improved, that is where difficult.”

“Okay, so what do we want then? For the ship, I would say we want a multi-variable light detection set with added thermal mapping…”

Hebe kept bringing refreshments every hour or so while we hammered out the new sensory package that we would be deploying. We would need to have everyone who was thawed suit up and run off the canned air for a few hours while we depressurized the ship. That way we could run the new senor leads through the hull.

A few additional modifications were made for my M1K33. A new “shield” unit would be running with the constructor bots. Creating a wall to deflect any micro-meteors that could impact them while working. The idea came from a compliment on the ballistic shield arm we had reviewed.

The new sensors would also be able to detect fluctuations in gravity waves. Something as small as our jump ships would only be detectable at ranges closer than 500 km while an Ark would be detectable up to a 500,000 km. Not exactly scalable, but we could create a sensors field when we got to where we were going. We designed a sensor buoy with a communication node with that in mind.

After that, Observer led them through some higher mathematics that we humans hadn’t yet developed. Hera was excited. The problem occurred when she tried to process the calculations for a null-gravity weapon. All of her “children” stopped and disappeared, along with most her temple. Even I got a massive headache as she pulled on my available Neural for processing power. What felt like minutes later the temple stabilized and rebuilt, then her VI processes started to rebuild themselves, then they re-took their forms and joined us again. Watching a VI created from nothing from an AI made me understand why we named them all after gods.

“This has been a very productive half hour. Thank you for joining us, Jax. And Observer, thank you for the data. I already have Ares and Enyo testing weapons and armor designs.”

“Request help. Recover lost.”

“What Observer is saying is that we still need to help him attempt to recover the Escort ships in hopes that we can find if anyone of his people are alive for us to save.”

Observer nodded.

“That’s why he brought us through the wormhole, to begin with. Do you recall the discussion of the AI?”

“Yes, sort of. We received the data as Overlord, and from there the individuals made the decision to come. I was against it. Too many unknowns. Too large a chance for my mortals to be injured. I was right; we shouldn’t have come, however between Yama and Rasputin, even I was convinced to at least try. The data of the wormhole transition alone would have been worth it. Unfortunately, like so much other data, it was corrupted when the takeover happened.”

“Wait, you said half hour? I thought the time dilation worked differently. Where one day in the real was an hour here. I know the time I have experienced has been a hell of a lot longer than thirty minutes!”

“Relax, Jax. The time dilation in Yama’s game is to ensure that sensory data is synchronized properly for everyone playing. Because it is just you, I can dial the temporal dilation in the other direction. We have been in here for twelve hours, only thirty minutes has passed in the Real.”

“Interesting. More computing power, what do?” Observer brought up

“With more power, she could probably set a time dilation for a hundred years to thirty minutes?” I finished off with a question. How did that scale?

“Something like that. It works best if we use exponential growth. It helps us calculate the additional growth required for additional users as well as time dilation. That empty cargo bay you are almost done putting together? Something that size could take us to a one month in the game to one hour in the real.” Rasputin stepped through the door with Yama.

“Recommended for the sssssssciencccessss.”

“Observer, can you help us with Power next?” Rasputin interrupted the derailment before it started.

“Yessss. Power will be critical in the nexssst month.”

“Zeus should have been working on this data, but we haven’t been able to find any leeway.” Hera piped in. “If we thaw too many pods then more power must be spent on environmental, charging suits, gravity, you know ‘Mortal’ things. If we plug in too many people, then we need the power for processing. There hasn’t been a breakthrough yet.”

Another eight hours later, we could create the fuel for the Thorium Power generation from uranium used in our Depleted Uranium bullets. We had enough rounds to triple the estimate, and we would be able to build large batteries from the crystal matrixes. After that, we would be in a solar system and could recharge with solar power and possibly find some U-233 to convert into material for the plants.

Observer was reluctant to give us data on new power sources, independent from Thorium.

“What? I get that power generation bleeds into weapons development technologies. That’s why the idea of technology trees is a little absurd.” Yama glared at me for that comment. Looks like that was a feature he had plugged into The Game.

“Look, laser technology gave us advances in medicine and research. There was no good way to weaponize it due to power last century, right? Sure, we could have giant tanks that had generators, but those would have to charge the capacitors for twenty or thirty minutes per shot. Now with the crystals, we can do that.” Hephaestus looked at me blankly, then ran out of the room shouting for Ares and Enyo to follow him.

“I am so glad you decided to come tonight, Jax.” Hera was beaming.

“Uh, yeah. So, where was I? Ahh, so now we could possibly have an energy-only based laser system that is portable. And it was scaled through a lot of different technologies. Next look at plasma. Again, great for researching EM fields, but for weaponry no good. One magnet fails, and you lose full containment. Again, the crystals could help, but only for power to store the electricity for the fields. It does nothing for the actual EM field to strengthen it to ensure containment isn’t lost. It wasn’t until we had shield technology based off EM frequencies that we were able to weaponize it.”

“Yessss, the Firsssst Uprisssing. That would have been fun to watch.” Yama delivered the line so flatly that it took me a moment to realize he was making a joke.

“Sure. Toasters toasting with toast instead of drinks was the cute part.” I replied. There was no way I was going to let him out-snark me. Probably.

It took us a few minutes to get back on track with “Robot Uprising” jokes being made on occasion by the AI to keep pulling us right back off topic.

“Anyway, thinking of technology as a ‘tree’ instead of as a ‘net’ or ‘web’ is just wrong. That’s all I was getting at. Anyway, Observer, so we understand why you aren’t willing to give us that data. If this were a game, we would next be looking at either FTL propulsion through Alcubierre drives or time/space warping, or however, you want to talk about it. Possibly even sub or hyper special propulsion. There is even the urban legend of the doctor who developed an engine that would move the universe itself instead of the object, that way the object technically wasn’t breaking the limit of the speed of light.”

“Look at the mathematics. All problems solved. More layers.” Observer would not budge, but at least he was giving hints.

“Good idea. Rasputin, did you share my experiences trying to get into the lab tonight? I think Hera would like to see that. Then possibly send out a notice to all of the scientists about the new math.”

Rasputin and Yama both laughed at the shit-eating grin plastered across my face. A moment later Hera’s face scrunched up like she had eaten something that was not agreeing with her.

“Yes, those lay-abouts are NOT doing their diligence for their goddess!” Yeah, Rasputin shared with her.

I was suddenly sitting in the pod and had automatically started unbuckling myself. I greeted a VERY disgruntled Head of Applied Sciences on my way out of the bay. I could still grab some sleep before reporting to finish the cargo bay. I skipped rest and started reviewing the armors more in-depth.

Three days later, the cargo bay was finished for all internal repairs, upgraded to a zero-G facility, and we had successfully installed the new sensors. My M1K33s were in teams on the hull, repairing the exterior damage from the sneak attack.

New Math - Original

We kicked off the discussion. Observer reviewing the sensor anomalies that we have been seeing, the Graeae then discussing our technological limitations to him, and then Hera asking some questions that even made me uncomfortable.

“The issue here,” I stated flatly, “is that all of us from Sol have the same level of technology. The only reason we have a leg up is because of the database that you provided us, Observer. There is no way that they are from Sol.”

I was answering some speculation from Observer about the anomalies being stealth craft from the rogue Arks.

“The rest humanity doesn’t have that data, so at most they can create technologies based off the crystals. Whatever it or they are, I seriously doubt they are human. We need a safe port so we can fully repair our exteriors, upgrade the sensors, and we need to figure out a way to mine some Thorium.” Hera was not looking at me with happy thoughts as I continued.

“Because we keep seeing these blips, we know there is something there. That is why I want us to figure out what they are. Can we even handle the repairs at the speeds we are going?”

Haephestus entered the room.

“Yes, we can! You actually gave us the answer to that, Miss Jax.” He said. His spoke slower and with a lower pitch than I thought it would be, each word wrapping up the listener in what can only be described as a friendly hug.

A screen flashed in front of me. Hanging in the air was the schematic of the MiK33 Construction Drone.

“Well shit, those will actually work in the Real as well? I thought you were all just blowing smoke up our asses.”

“Yama asked us to verify every schematic created for it’s ability to be made in the real world. This one caught my attention immediately. It can be used to build.” That voice had the comfort of bourbon and leather built into it.

The three crones were next, each speaking the sentence in the same words at different frequencies, each harmonizing with the others.

“Your sensors packages brought you to our attention. Helmets with full suites built in using a smaller footprint. Perhaps looking at our sensors schematics you can find a way to improve them.”

Observer spoke up, shattering the ambiance created between Haephestus’s smooth rolling words and the three crone’s beautiful harmony.

“Improve easy. How improved, that is where difficult.”

“Okay, so what do we want then? For the ship I would say we want a multi-variable light detection set with added thermal mapping…”

Hebe kept bringing refreshments every hour or so while we hammered out the new sensory package that we would be deploying. We would need to have everyone who was thawed suit up and run off canned air for a few hours while we depressurized the ship. That way we could run the new senor leads through the hull.

A few additional modifications were made for my M1K33. A new “shield” unit would be running with the constructor bots. Creating a wall to deflect any micro-meteors that could impact them while working. The idea came from a compliment on the ballistic shied arm we had reviewed.

The new sensors would also be able to detect fluctuations in gravity waves. Something as small as our jump ships would only be detectable at ranges closer than 500 km while an Ark would be detectable up to a 500,000 km. Not exactly scalable, but we could create a sensors field when we got to where we were going. We designed a sensor buoy with a communication node with that in mind.

After that, Observer led them through some higher mathematics that we humans hadn’t yet developed. Hera was excited. The problem occurred when she tried to process the calculations for a null-gravity weapon. All of her “children” stopped and disappeared, along with most her temple. Even I got a huge headache as she pulled on my available Neural for processing power. What felt like minutes later the temple stabilized and rebuilt, then her VI processes started to rebuild themselves, then they re-took their forms and joined us again. Watching a VI created from nothing from an AI made me understand why we named them all after gods.

“This has been a very productive half hour. Thank you for joining us, Jax. And Observer, thank you for the data. I already have Ares and Enyo testing weapons and armor designs.”

“Request help. Recover lost.”

“What Observer is saying is that we still need to help him attempt to recover the Escort ships to see if there is anyone alive for us to save.”

Observer nodded.

“That’s why he brought us through the wormhole to begin with. Do you recall the discussion of the AI?”

“Yes, sort of. We received the data as Overlord and from there the individuals made the decision to come. I was against it. Too many unknowns. Too large a chance for my mortals to be injured. I was right, we shouldn’t have come, however between Yama and Rasputin, even I was convinced to at least try. The data of the wormhole transition alone would have been worth it. Unfortunately, like so much other data, it was corrupted when the takeover happened.”

“Wait, you said half hour? I thought the time dilation worked differently. Where one day real was an hour here. I know the time I have experienced has been a hell of a lot longer than thirty minutes!”

“Relax, Jax. The time dilation in Yama’s game is to ensure that sensory data is synchronized properly for everyone playing. Because it is just you, I can dial the temporal dilation in the other direction. We have been in here for twelve hours, only thirty minutes has passed in the Real.”

“Interesting. More computing power, what do?” Observer brought up

“With more power she could probably set a time dilation for a hundred years to thirty minutes?” I finished off with a question. How did that scale?

“Something like that. It works best if we use exponential growth. It helps us calculate the additional growth required for additional users as well as time dilation. That empty cargo bay you are almost done putting together? Something that size could take us to a one month in game to one hour in the real.” Rasputin stepped through the door with Yama.

“Recommended for the sssssssciencccessss.”

“Observer, can you help us with Power next?” Rasputin interrupted the derailment before it started.

“Yessss. Power will be critical in the nexssst month”

“Zeus should have been working on this data, but we haven’t been able to find any leeway.” Hera piped in. “If we thaw too many pods then more power must be spent on environmental, charging suits, gravity, you know ‘Mortal’ things. If we plug in too many people, then we need the power for processing. There hasn’t been a breakthrough yet.”

Another eight hours later, we could create the fuel for the Thorium Power generation from uranium used in our Depleted Uranium bullets. We had enough rounds to triple the estimate, and we would be able to build giant batteries from the crystal matrixes. After that we would be in a solar system and could recharge with solar power and possibly find some U-233 to convert into material for the plants.

Observer was reluctant to give us data on new power sources, independent from Thorium.

“What? We get that power generation bleeds into weapons development technologies. That’s why the idea of technology trees is a little absurd.” Yama glared at me for that comment. Looks like that was a feature he had plugged into The Game.

“Look, laser technology gave us advances in medical and research. There was no good way to weaponize it due to power last century, right? Sure, we could have giant tanks that had generators but those would have to charge the capacitors for twenty or thirty minutes per shot. Now with the crystals we can do that.” Haephestus looked at me blankly, then ran out of the room shouting for Ares and Enyo to follow him.

“I am so glad you decided to come tonight, Jax.” Hera was beaming.

“Uh, yeah. So… Where was I? Ahh, so now we could possibly have a energy only based laser system that is portable. And it was scaled through a lot of different technologies. Next look at plasma. Again, great for researching EM fields, but for weaponry no good. One magnet fails, and you lose full containment. Again, the crystals could help, but only for power to store the electricity for the fields. It does nothing for the actual EM field to strengthen it to ensure containment isn’t lost. It wasn’t until we had shield technology based off EM frequencies that we were able to weaponize it.”

“Yessss, the Firsssst Uprisssing. That would have been fun to watch.” Yama delivered the line so flatly that it took me a moment to realize he was making a joke.

“Sure. Toasters toasting with toast instead of drinks was the cute part.” I replied. There was no way I was going to let him out-snark me. Probably.

It took us a few minutes to get back on track with “Robot Uprising” jokes being made on occasion by the AI to keep pulling us right back off topic.

“Anyway, thinking of technology as a ‘tree’ instead of as a ‘net’ or ‘web’ is just wrong. That’s all I was getting at. Anyway, Observer, so we understand why you aren’t willing to give us that data. If this was a game we would next be looking at either FTL propulsion through Alcubierre drives or time/space warping, or however you want to talk about it. Possibly even sub or hyper special propulsion. There is even the urban legend of the doctor who developed an engine that would move the universe itself instead of the object, that way the object technically wasn’t breaking the limit of the speed of light.”

“Look mathematics. All problems solved. More layers.” Observer would not budge, but at least he was giving hints.

“Good idea. Rasputin, did you share my experiences trying to get into the lab tonight? I think Hera would like to see that. Then possibly send out a notice to all of the scientists about the new math.”

Rasputin and Yama both laughed at the shit eating grin plastered across my face. A moment later Hera’s face scrunched up like she had eaten something that was not agreeing with her.

“Yes, those lay-abouts are NOT doing their diligence for their goddess!” Yeah, Rasputin shared with her.

I was suddenly sitting in the pod and had automatically started unbuckling myself. I greeted a VERY disgruntled Head of Applied Sciences on my way out of the bay. I could still grab some sleep before reporting to finish the cargo bay. I skipped sleep and started reviewing the armors more in depth.

Three days later, the cargo bay was finished for all internal repairs, upgraded to a zero-G facility, and we had successfully installed the new sensors. My M1K33s were in teams on the hull, repairing the exterior damage from the sneak attack.