Chapter 11: Chapter 11 | TRILLION – Unlimited Resources

Trillion floated into consciousness. She had learnt from the previous wake-up. The slower the better. She slowly floated above her bed, feeling the weightlessness around her. She took a deep breath in and floated closer to the ceiling. Then she breathed out and drifted towards the ground.

She rose and fell with her breathing, her mind wake-dreaming as she thought about her world. Excitement mounted as she pictured what she was about to build. She opened her eyes and jumped out of bed, floating downstairs towards her front door where she teleported to the bridge.

Trillion appeared with a swagger. “Good morning, Ship.”

He didn’t acknowledge her. His head was down, focusing on a control panel. He was moving through screens quickly.

She stretched her arms apart. A hapticgraphic image of the planet appeared in her hands. It was shiny, metallic and bright. She studied it. It didn’t look like the planet she remembered; she remembered it being greener.

She turned her head towards the screen up on the wall. It had the same title as when she left. It was showing the number of fabricators, ants and fabricator pallets she had, but it didn’t make sense. The screen was covered in numbers. “Ship, what’s this?”

Ship bowed his head, looking at the ground as if ashamed of himself. “Sorry Trillion.”

“Sorry about what?”

“I just stepped away for a bit. I left Lex in charge of sorting everything. He didn’t stop.”

Trillion pointed up to the orb in the corner. “What did you do, Lex?”

The orb flashed orange. A large screen appeared in front of Trillion. It just appeared. It was projected using the hapticgraphic projectors that made everything in Trillions simulated world. She noted that trick for later. She placed one finger on the screen and studied the rows of numbers. “This looks like a good thing. How did we get so many resources?”

Ship looked up briefly before looking back down at his robotic feet. “It’s not a good thing, Trillion. Look at the planet.”

She studied the planet. It was shiny. She zoomed in, looking at the surface. There wasn’t a tinge of green on it anymore. She had a sinking feeling that they had killed the planet. “How did this happen? Is the planet gone?”

Ship nodded. “It was exponential growth.” He put his hands forward. An image of a fabricator appeared. It almost looked like a large shipping container. He pointed at the fabricator. “Every new fabricator could create more fabricators.” On the image Ship was holding another fabricator appeared. “And as we had more fabricators it was faster to create even more.” The image Ship held showed four fabricators. Then eight. Then sixteen. “Fabricators were building ants and ants began mining resources for the fabricators.” Ship zoomed out to reveal trillions of fabricators, ants and pallets.

Trillion studied the planet. She struggled to comprehend the sheer number of resources mined in the system now. She noticed that the numbers on the screen were growing. And growing quickly. “Why is that number still growing? Can you stop everything?”

Ship zoomed out some more, revealing an asteroid belt around the star covered in fabricators cranking out ants. “We’ve only got line of sight communication with the fabricators on this side of the planet.”

Trillion went pale. “Ship, what have you done? Where were you when this all happened?”

Ship lowered his head. “I thought Lex could handle it all.”

Trillion shook her head, scolding the droid. “Atlas told me you could be lazy. I didn’t believe him. Now we have a huge mess to clean up.” She pointed at the orb in the corner. “Lex, stop all fabricator production that you can. Start assigning fabricators to produce communication towers. And let’s get a satellite network around the planet.”

She turned back to Ship. “How long will it take to build a satellite network around the whole planet? Something big enough to reach all the fabricators.”

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Ship explained the calculation from Lex. “It will take ten minutes to build a network around the whole planet.”

She took a step back, not expecting it to be that fast. She had thought at least a month. “How? That’s so fast!”

Ship grimaced. “We have so many fabricators, we can build anything quickly now.”

She could see Ship’s body language change. She had spent so much time with him that she could tell when there was something not quite right. There was something he didn’t want to tell her. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He remained silent. She held out her arms, pulling the planet projection up again. “You’ve completely destroyed all the life down there, haven’t you? Turned it all into fabricators, pallets or ants. Karma is going to come back to us.”

Trillion started to feel a pang in her heart. She could feel the strong desire to seed again. She felt like she was further away from seeding a world than when she had begun this journey. That desire was pushing her to know more. To know how far away from it she was. She needed to understand just how unlikely seeding this world was.

She spun the image of the world in her hand. “This looks like the Death Star was designed out of blocks and pixels.” She could see the smooth texture of a planet replaced with containers. She zoomed into where water once was. “There isn’t any water here.”

Ship nodded. “Every inch of sand, earth and ocean has been bottled up and turned into pallets.” He lowered his head. It almost looked like he was touching the ground. “Even the air has been bottled up and turned into more pallets.”

“How long have you known about this?”

“I woke up just a few days before you.”

She started to laugh. That’s all she could do. The damage was done, and she needed to regain her Zen. “Ship, this is comically bad.”

She looked towards the orb in the corner. “Lex, have we halted all fabricators?”

He beeped a few times, flashing red. She looked at the screen – it showed they had only switched off 0.1 per cent of the fabricators.

Trillion furrowed her eyebrows, not quite believing the number. “How have we only reached less than one per cent of the fabricators? It’s been twenty minutes, have you not started building a communication network yet?”

Ship lowered his head once more. “We’ve only managed to make contact with 0.1 per cent of the fabricators. We’ve completed the communication network around the planet …” Ship stopped talking.

Trillion focused her eyes on Ship. Holding eye contact for longer than normal. Without saying a word she was letting Ship know to spit it out, “Tell me now, Ship.”

Ship simulated a large breath out. “There are fabricators out in the asteroid belt too. I estimate every planet in the solar system has fabricators on it now. They are creating new fabricators and mining resources.”

All Trillion’s Zen was gone. She screamed with rage and then broke into an uncontrollable laugh.

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