Chapter 24: Chapter 24: ICARUS – Discount Ringworld

“So a day will be almost 24 hours exactly?” Icarus asked.

Ship nodded. “Yes, if we use the ring I’m suggesting.”

The three of them had been debating for days which part of the ring to inhabit. Icarus had a strong preference for the innermost ring – the one made up of mostly large moons, which did not look like a ring at all.

Icarus and Ship both stood in Icarus’s kitchen while he made a coffee. It was his fifth coffee today. And each time he had opted to head back to his kitchen to make the coffee rather than automatically generating one.

Icarus took a sip. “Explain why we can’t just connect the large moons together?”

Ship pointed to the orb. “Lex can’t fabricate any material strong enough to physically connect each of the moons together.”

Icarus raised a cartoonish eyebrow. “Can’t, or just thinks it has a low probability of success?”

“Icarus, I’ve audited Lex already. It’s actually something he can’t do.”

“Okay, Ship. And it won’t be a true ring world unless we can connect all the pieces together. So I want them all to be connected.”

Icarus rubbed his large eyes. He wasn’t used to receiving pushback from Ship. It seemed like the longer they spent together, the more balanced the relationship became. Ship would hold his ground when he thought he was right. “Okay, so show me how this would work.”

A hologram of the rings of Titan appeared in front of Icarus. “Hey, don’t you think the name Titan has a nice ring to it?” he chuckled, unable to help himself. He was quite impressed with the clever pun.

Ship shook his head and highlighted a specific ring around the gas giant, clearly unimpressed with Icarus’s bad joke.

“This is what I suggest,” Ship said as he enlarged the ring he wanted Icarus to focus on. All the asteroids and details became visible.

Ship pointed to the ring. “We can run cables between most of the objects in this ring, connecting them in a network of criss-crossing lines. Lex believes we can fabricate a cable strong enough to connect these much shorter distances.”

Green lines started appearing between the gaps of all the asteroids, forming a lattice of lines crossing from one object to the next.

“This is where Lex suggests we run the cables throughout the rings so we don’t reach the limits of what the cables can handle,” Ship said.

Ship shifted the holographic view. The red lines faded to grey. Several large objects along the ring changed to green. Soon there were hundreds of objects highlighted in green.

Ship pointed at the highlighted green objects. “These are large moons scattered throughout the rings. They are as large as the moons closest to the planet. We could use them as colony locations. It wouldn’t have one G of gravity, though.”

Icarus studied the projected image, contemplating what Ship was suggesting. “I understand now. Using this specific ring here ¼” Icarus pointed at the ring, “¼ gives us large enough moons to build colonies. And because of all the smaller asteroids in between, we can use them to connect all the colonies together, sharing electricity and communication through the wires.”

The orb flashed green. Ship nodded too.

The three chatted for a while about the mechanics of creating a ring world by linking multiple asteroids together. At first it would be nothing more than cables connecting the asteroids and moons. Cables to share electricity and fibre optic cables for communication. But over time they could build more rigid structures fully encompassing the gas giant in a ring.

Lex had pointed out two things that were either divine intervention or the best luck ever.

Icarus looked at the orb, not quite believing what he had been shown. “So Lex, you’re telling me that with this ring, we will not only get 24-hour days, but also get longer and shorter daylight hours depending on the time of year? How does that work?”

Rather than respond, Lex just added an image of the star to the hologram. Icarus had always imagined the position of the rings incorrectly. With the placement of the star, he could now see why longer days would occur. The rings were at a 24-degree tilt relative to the star. Similar to how Earth’s rotation is at a slight tilt to the sun. This tilt meant that at certain times of the Titan year. The ring would either cross the equator in front of the star or not – thus creating longer and shorter days. It wouldn’t be exactly like Earth. But day-lengths would be different throughout the year.

“That’s amazing,” Icarus said, almost not believing it. “I think this is a sign that this will be our colony.”

“Could we use the tilt and mirrors to simulate real seasons too?” Icarus asked?

Ship shook his head. “Seasons don’t work like that Icarus.”

Icarus, Ship and Lex began the journey of creating cables between the various asteroids. They decided to start by connecting the asteroids nearest the large moons. They would run connections close to the moons last because dealing with a gravity well, even a small one, defeated the reason for manufacturing in space.

Icarus started outlining an action plan for the team. “Lex, identify locations for our fabricators. Find sites where we can leave them for years – preferably near the moons, as those will be the locations that will need the most materials fabricated. But not on the moons, as fabricating fibre optics is better without gravity.” He turned his head towards Ship. “While we wait for Lex to find locations for the fabricators, can you start mining the asteroids? Let’s turn the whole outer ring into pellets. We’ll need enough resources if we want to turn this into a real ring world.”

Lex had selected the first site – a large asteroid near the edge of the ring. Ship had embedded the fabricator in the side of it, deep into the asteroid away from meteor impacts. From there it was producing kilometres of cable.

Lex had come up with an ingenious construction. It was a thick cable, about ten centimetres wide, strong enough to handle impacts from tiny asteroids, and strong enough to act as the glue between all the different pieces that would make up the ring. Inside hosted a fibre optic cable. And because space was cold, Lex discovered they could use a superconductor material to transmit electricity through the wire to enable the team to electrify the ring without losing any power as it travelled. It was encased in a highly reflective material to maintain the negative temperatures.

Icarus reviewed the plans his team had presented. “Lex, these designs need some redundancy in them.”

Ship shook his head. “Lex gives us only a two per cent probability of having the cable destroyed in a thousand years.”

Icarus looked at Ship. In some ways Ship and Lex were super intelligent, but in others they were quite naïve. “Even if the probability is less than one per cent, we don’t want the whole colony taken down by a single stray asteroid. Anything that needs power to survive needs at least three cables connected to it. That includes any of the vertical farms.”

 

 

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Lex reworked the plan multiple times, accounting for every possible scenario Icarus and Ship could think of. During that time the fabricators had produced enough cable to reach all the way around Titan multiple times – almost a million kilometres of it waiting to be used.

Icarus elected to drive the eleph-ANT laying the first piece of cable, wanting an excuse to jump into his eleph-ANT cockpit again. “If we use eleph-ANTs to push the cables out from fabricators, then I’ll use this eleph-ANT at the end of the cable to guide it through the ring, ensuring it doesn’t collide with anything. Meet me in the cargo hangar,” he said as he teleported out.

He walked along the cargo hangar, Ship and Lex beside him. They arrived back at the eleph-ANT cockpit and excitedly teleported inside.

“You ready?” Icarus said as he turned the machine on and was lifted off the ground.

Ship had just got strapped in as Icarus took control of the eleph-ANT and guided it towards the closest asteroid. He fired all six rockets, trying to guide the cable gently, but found himself constantly over- and under-correcting the movements. Controlling an eleph-ANT was hard enough, but with a cable attached, it was an almost impossible task. Many times he all but lost control of the eleph-ANT, and Ship had to jump in and correct the movement for him.

They planned to link as many nearby asteroids as possible together before ending on the moon where the gravity well would be hard to escape carrying all that weight.

With the first cable connected to the nearest asteroid, Icarus handed over the controls to Ship and Lex to complete. “You two can handle it from here,” he said with a sigh of relief. It wasn’t as much fun as his first time controlling an eleph-ANT.

Icarus planned to get progress updates from Ship daily, because he knew if he left Ship to the task, he would surely cut corners or get bored.

 

* * *

 

A few weeks later Icarus was looking at reports and news they had been passively hearing from Sol – they had built a big enough radio dish on Titan’s rings to gain information. He couldn’t help but worry about the lack of noise coming from the Sol system. “Lex, when was the last time we intercepted any communication from Sol?”

A message appeared on one of the screens. It read three days.

Icarus scratched his head. “And what is the longest we have gone without hearing anything from Sol?”

A new message appeared – it showed they had gone several months without intercepting messages from Sol.

Ship interjected to clarify things, his voice coming through a speaker in his office. “Never – there was a long period when we were behind a star and couldn’t see the system. That’s when we couldn’t see the constant chatter from the system. But there hasn’t been any moment where the system wasn’t at least leaking signals.”

Icarus clenched his hands, thinking about how he had to leave Mars so quickly. “Do you think that means the Fermi zealots won?” he asked, using the derogatory term with malice.

“Unlikely,” Ship replied.  

Icarus recalled when Atlas recruited him to join the colonising mission, when the two of them were back on Mars. Atlas had made him work in secret. They couldn’t let the Fermi zealots know of their plan.

The Fermion Party was a political power back on Earth, and quite a strong one. Their beliefs were simple. The Fermi Paradox wasn’t a paradox at all – it was a universal law that all sufficiently advanced technological species would adapt. More like ‘sufficiently moronic’, Icarus mused.

“It makes my blood boil,” Icarus seethed. “Basically, these crazy people believe the reason we don’t see any aliens around is because ‘somehow’ all species realised it is better for the universe if they stay on the planet they evolved from.” He noticed he hadn’t felt angry over the topic until just then. When he thought about what he went through before leaving Mars.

Ship appeared in the room, holding a hand up to calm Icarus down. “Hold on, Icarus, we don’t even know it was them.”

Icarus shook his head. “I know it’s them! Only they are crazy enough to take humanity back to the Dark Ages. I understand them not wanting every star to be populated with Homo sapiens, but the universe is a huge place. There’s enough space for us and other alien species to evolve.”

Then Icarus thought about his other Beta Explorers. About their journey into space, worry clear on his cartoon face. If light was reaching them now, there surely had to be a virus or something transmitted their way. They wouldn’t attempt to wipe out humanity without also ensuring all the colony ships were identified and eliminated.

Icarus looked at Ship. “Does Sol know where we are? Could they possibly see any light from our engines?”

“No. We took every single precaution possible. We followed the plan exactly.”

“Is there any possible way they could retrace our path? To guess which system we ended up at?”

“No, not a chance. I waited until we were behind a star before changing direction. Any light coming off our engines would have been masked by the star. We even changed direction twice. There is no way Sol knows where we are.”

Icarus looked at the orb. “Lex, give me a probability that Sol doesn’t know where we are.”

The figure 99.99978 appeared on Icarus’s screen.

Icarus rubbed his hands, trying not to worry. “I guess there’s not much we can do about it then. Is there any way of finding out what happened back on Earth?”

Ship shrugged. “Not unless we send a ship there. A lot could have changed since we left. A lot of innovation and technology was built. Perhaps they no longer use radio waves to communicate.”

Icarus knew Ship was grasping at straws. It was highly unlikely that all communications would be upgraded all at once. Crazy people like that didn’t just disappear. “Think about it, Ship. What are the Fermi zealots’ three goals?”

“One: return humanity to a Type 1 civilisation. Two: align technology development inwards on simulations, not exploration. Three: if the first two aren’t possible, restart humanity back to pre-industrial days with these goals at the heart of the new culture.” Icarus paused, thinking about the ramifications of what he had just said. “And I bet when these crazy people couldn’t get their way, they decided to attempt to restart humanity.”

Icarus thought for a moment. He knew the weakest link was Lex. Only Lex was reprogrammable. “As a precaution, Ship, block Lex from manual control of anything on this ship. I don’t want to risk him getting a virus.”

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