The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (53 page)

Querice:
The shuttle could go to any random place in the galaxy.

Masimovian:
What does the portal look like?

Querice:
The portal is the complete absence of light, as though one were staring directly into a black hole. It truly forms a 3-dimensional hole in space.

Masimovian:
So the portal will be invisible to the transhuman eye?

Querice:
No! The edge of the portal is clearly seen. Where the dense exotic matter of the portal ends and the mixture of space and normal matter begins, there’s a dark purple circle marking the boundary. The circular boundary is not a thin line but a shimmering band radiating away from the center of the portal, changing from purple to dark blue at its outermost edge.

Masimovian:
How far can the pilot take the shuttle with each jump through space?

Querice:
Even the best pilot has only limited ability to travel a distance with accuracy. The farther a pilot wishes to travel, the less accurate she can be.

Masimovian:
Why is that?

Querice:
It’s due to the quantum uncertainty principle. The best pilot might be able to travel to another star system 100 light years away but not be able to accurately determine where they’ll emerge in that system. If the same pilot attempted to jump only 10 years away, maybe she could put her crew in orbit around the star at a known radius or even around a planet in the system. In other words, when jumping long distances, the jumps must be split into smaller segments, and then the craft must travel within a system to another Lagrange point before making a new portal and initiating the next segment of the trip.

Masimovian:
There’s a trade-off between resources and time.

Querice:
Yes! Based on our ability to procure exotic matter and store it within the shuttle, we believe we can travel as far as 20,000 light years round trip.

Masimovian:
How does this relate to time travel?

Querice:
The implementation of the time travel system is similar to that of the interstellar travel system. The portal must also be formed at a point of sufficient gravitational stability, the nearest to Earth being Lagrange points one or two. The system will be the exact same until the point where the shaped exotic matter explosion happens. When the exotic matter explodes, there must be a beam of tachyons passing through the middle of the dense exotic matter pellet. As the exotic matter state change happens, the tachyons connect and produce a different effect on the new particles. Continuing the liquid and ice example, think of an icicle; the tachyons change the quantum number properties of the exotic particles so they connect to particles in other times instead of other points in space. Similar to interstellar travel, during the explosion is the critical moment when the pilot must fix the time they wish to travel in mind; they must use the ZPF to manipulate the quantum numbers of the dense exotic matter so that the portal will open in the correct time. When returning through this two-way portal, it is crucial that the portal be stable, as changes to the quantum numbers of the exotic matter could take the traveler to a different time.

Masimovian:
What happens if the quantum numbers change?

Querice:
For most manipulators of the ZPF, it would not be possible to change them again and find the path back to their original time. However, a sufficiently skilled transhuman could focus intently and make the changes. It is not physically impossible, just challenging. A transhuman particularly skilled in manipulating the ZPF should also be able to change the time and space destination of an exotic/tachyon portal. The portal destination is controlled by two separate quantum numbers: spin of the exotic particle controls time, and angular momentum controls space. However, it takes unusual concentration to be able to manipulate both numbers in the time required.

Pledge to Beimeni

We pledge ourselves to the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni, the underground paradise of humanity, the place where everything we can imagine is real, where service is rewarded with immortality, where freedom and justice are supreme, and where proper and significant conversions are a sign of our commitment to excellence.

We reject hatred and malice, the equivalent to disorder and disarray, for these traitorous temptations could lead to our ruin. We understand that the common goal of the commonwealth is to return to the surface from where a new Beimeni may be born, though we will never forget the seeds that allowed us to avert extinction.

Reassortment is the plague in the paradise upon the surface, the great bane of our time, and as cruel as it can be to humanity atop, it chisels at our psyche below, unleashing forbidden emotions. But we will not allow the depression and envy distributed by the plague to enter our minds, for these feelings often lead to hatred and malice and disorder and disarray.

The Dark Age has ended. The Great Commonwealth and its thirty territories are the light. Long live Beimeni and its eternal populace, and may we accept endless expansion, endless conversion, endless peace, and endless prosperity for all, and may we serve Beimeni and live forever!

Strike Team Strategist/Striker/Aera Oath of Enlistment

I, _____, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Formation Document of the Underground against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will protect transhumankind from Reassortment and structural breaches in the phantom Earth; and that I will obey the orders of the Strategic Expedition (Strike) Team Captain over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Strike Team Justice. So help me gods.

Strike Team Captain Oath of Enlistment

I, _____, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Formation Document of the Underground against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will protect transhumankind from Reassortment and structural breaches in the phantom Earth; and that I will obey the orders of the Supreme Commander of the Strategic Expedition (Strike) Teams, or other officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Strike Team Justice. So help me gods.

Polemon Proclamation

From the fifty-first day of the year 308, After Reassortment,

We renounce the thirty precepts that govern the thirty territories of the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni;

We renounce the Marstone artificial intelligence and its omnipresence in our thoughts, dreams, speech, and actions;

We renounce the required registration of citizens in Marstone’s Database;

We renounce the central government in Phanes;

We renounce any leader of the thirty territories who follows the thirty precepts;

We renounce the bygone strike teams, which no longer act as the protectors of the people they once were;

We renounce the Harpoon Exams and Harpoon Auction adhered to by the thirty territories;

We renounce the Lower Level and anyone who perpetuates its existence;

And we renounce the Fountain of Youth.

From the fifty-first day of the year 308, After Reassortment,

We recognize that the members of the Liberation Front are in rebellion against the Great Commonwealth;

We recognize our duty to fellow members and friends of the movement, to provide them bread, shelter, and safe passage throughout any territory inside the Earth that adheres to the thirty precepts;

We recognize the Formation of the Underground and the liberties it ensures;

We recognize allies and safe havens of the Liberation Front and will protect them against all agents of the Great Commonwealth;

We recognize that unlike those under the influence and in acceptance of the thirty precepts, death may come to us at any time, in any place;

And we recognize that our objectives will not be complete until the thirty precepts are dissolved and the unregistered, illegal residents of the underground are given equal rights under the laws of transhumankind and the gods.

Song of the Jubilee

Our scientists searching, sealing, Healing Reassortment sorrows, Giving faith to our tomorrows, When we watch the sun arising.

Our partners outpour gratitude, While we beg the gods for mercy, For a volunteer surviving, For our hopes and dreams reviving.

Our trial fearing, freezing, roams The island filled with fertile loam, Reassortment waning, weary, Weeping island now not dreary.

Our engineers fly upstarting, Planting, fishing, celebrating, Reconstructing all the surface, Where we’ll cherish all resources.

The Fountain

Through this inferno, through this labyrinth, You’ll find me here, upon a fountain plinth.

In this steaming underground, we are young, We are immortal, we will move as one.

Down the marble walls, flows the sea and earth, Down my body, I can’t conceal my mirth.

Here we share in Athanasia’s Kiss,

A godly gift, we live in endless bliss.

We dip and dance, we breathe spicy vapors, With new genes, we outlive our ancestors, And one day we’ll rise above, hand in hand, And rise with our comrades, to wonderland.

The Fountain of Youth is where we gather— The Fountain of Youth binds us together …

Synbio Thief

I see who you seek, the synbio thief,

I see crows circling beneath moonlight, I seek escape from this maze with relief.

I see the future, a Janzer gunfight,

I see through walls and falls an oasis, A place to bury bodies out of sight.

When starlight recedes and water freezes, The thief leads you into blade and mist, Swarming, swinging, the thief tantalizes.

The cloud abounds, surrounds the iron fist, The thief confounds, this battle will be brief, In the field, the thief’s a reductionist.

Deadly with diamonds, the thief causes grief, I see who you seek, the synbio thief.

The following is the transcript of Supreme Scientist Solstice Rupel’s guest lecture to a Harpoon class in 277 AR. Though its central topic was transhuman theology, the lecture also covered subjects such as the Reassortment Atmospheric Anomaly, the Death Wave, the Second Hundred Years’ War, and the zeropoint field (ZPF), among others. Solstice disappeared from Marstone’s senses in 286 AR, three years after Jeremiah Selendia, her eternal partner, was demoted from Project Reassortment. She was later killed during a search and destroy mission led by then-Sergeant Marius Arnao in 353 AR. The transcript is stored in Marstone’s Database and is considered classified government property.

Scholars have argued for centuries about the causes and effects of the Second Hundred Years’ War. Some have gone so far as to instead call it the Resource War, reasoning that if the war was fought over nonrenewable resources, then that could be its only cause. Others suggest that humanity’s tendency toward disorder and self-destruction angered the Twin Gods of the Cosmos, who struck us down the way they did the dinosaurs; our survival, and defiance of the gods, it is assumed, will lead to an even more painful and complete death than Reassortment exposure. Another view, which has gained more traction recently, is that it was the Earth itself, with a consciousness of its own, that caused the war, as the planet sought to rid itself of its human “parasites.” This is utter nonsense, in my opinion, while the effects, the utter decimation of the transhuman race, the regeneration of the Earth’s surface, and the alteration of the Earth’s atmosphere and soil—with Reassortment a permanent, and growing, component of both—shouldn’t be part of this discussion. They are observable. They are known.

The argument over the causes—a lack of resources, angry gods, a dying Earth—all miss the mark.

Let’s go back in time. The year 400 BR. Asteroid mining was a nascent industry. Over the next three hundred years, humanity depleted the Earth’s nonrenewable resources via traditional and bacterial methodologies in the continental and oceanic crusts. Advances in synbio technology, designed, in part, to extract raw materials from the Earth, were also used to enhance the human genome at a miniscule cost: a virus with the necessary instructions to alter human DNA could spread easily through a village, town, city, or country.

In short order, entire continents would be exposed to the gene therapies required to speed the evolutionary processes in unprecedented ways. Unlike untamed mutations, which, in addition to enabling sea creatures to walk on land, can cause deformities and retardation, directed alterations of the human genome accomplished what nature would take millions or even billions of years to accomplish through natural selection. Whereas the earliest human ancestor,
Sahelanthropus tchadensis
, with its flat face, brain size similar to that of a chimpanzee, and small canines, had evolved over six or seven million years into
Homo sapiens
, it took less than a century for
Homo sapiens
to evolve into
Homo transition
.

Compared to our ancestral
Homo sapiens
, we transhumans are taller, stronger, smarter, disease resistant, and more flexible to temperature and pressure fluctuations. Where the development of sophisticated language separated
Homo sapiens
from
Homo neanderthalensis
thirty thousand years ago, so too did our mind-body-cosmos interface separate us from
Homo sapiens
; you will all soon learn the power of the transhuman mind. We have greater control over our bodies, our emotions, and our consciousnesses than
Homo sapiens
, for our denser brains carry meshes and neurochips designed to tap into the network of the cosmos—the zeropoint field.