The World Of Alcubierre

Episode XXXIX

"We have no idea what we are doing, but it seems to be working." Jack said. Jack, Idara and Bailey huddled around the all-too-familiar conference room table. The slightly sour stench of tired, sweaty humans occupied the space. Each had long since acclimatized to it and it was only noticeable when one of them returned after a brief break. The entirety of their focus was fixed on the projected live-stream of the float's status, which was changing by the moment. "Do you see here?" His pointed finger drew small circles on the diagram, highlighting portions of the float's interior hull.

"That is where we received the electric pulses," Bailey said.

Jack nodded, "Xy guided us to them." He swiped in the air, and the schematic grew more complex as additional layers of information were added. First an overlay displaying countless intersecting and swirling lines within the tank. "These are the flows, generated by the hull cilia. The first cilia Xy directed us to significantly increased the granularity of the data we are receiving on these interior currents." A swipe in the air again. Two dots appeared in the interior of the float. One appeared a shade of yellow, the other a dull, pulsing red. "These are our friends. Xy is the yellow, Zyy is the red. We believe the colors indicate health status, but that's not certain."

He held his hand up and clutched the air, as if grasping a large, invisible knob. He rotated his wrist to the right and the yellow dot began to flit around the sides of the tank while the red dot swirled in a slow circle in the center. "This is Xy's movement since we obtained the ability to track them." Jack held up his other hand in the same fashion and rotated both. "Here's the currents within the tank mapped to Xy's location."

"It has been riding the currents it generates in response to each cilia we enable," Bailey added, her hands making circular movements in the air, causing the arrows indicating each current Xy utilized to highlight in blue. "The power draw for each cilia is relatively low compared to our capacity to feed into the float, but we are interacting with tiny fractions of a single percent of the total ecosystem."

Jack nodded, "Dot, twelve zeroes, and a one."

Idara watched the simulation play through, the engineer in her finding it momentarily impossible to do anything but marvel at the intricacy and sophistication of the entirely foreign system. "Do we have any sense of how many of these cilia we will need to feed to restore function to the float?"

Jack shook his head, "We are getting a better picture of what is going on inside, but we're not making much headway on understanding how this all maps back to a macro-status. We've just been following Xy's lead and hoping for the best."

Idara exhaled in frustration as she tried to figure out which part of their scheme would fall apart first. All of them were acting against orders, and they had no way of telling whether any of it even mattered without a way to measure progress toward their goal of restoring the float and helping Zyy. They had spent the better part of a day establishing the power linkage, and the timer on the fleet admiral's arrival continued to dwindle. Officer Rodriguez had been relatively benign, letting Idara go about her business without a surplus of scrutiny, but Idara suspected that her ruse would only last so long, particularly as the power drain became more apparent. "This is going to be complicated."

Jack shrugged, "Should be simple enough. We just need use the s**t from the s**t storm to smother the fire from the dumpster fire."

Idara blinked. Bailey grinned.

"That's comforting," Idara managed.

"Isn't it?" Jack replied. A sad smile crossed his face. "Kai always had a way with words."

The acting captain was quiet, unsure of how to respond. Rather than letting the moment drag out, she elected to plow onward. "Has there been any attempt at communication from Xy?"

"No, at least we do not think so. The primary communication link has been locked down and we've been running purely through the data link. I suspect Xy's been using all of its energy on the hull cilia. It also may not be able to communicate while it's away from the center of the float," Jack said.

"Why is that?"

Jack flipped a finger in the air from down to up a few times. The diagram shifted in response each time, retaining the same visual of the float, its occupants and the flows, but highlighting different aspects. After the fourth flip of the finger, the arrows displaying the currents shifted into large and small arrows with colors from blue to purple to red. "This displays the width of the flow and the speed of the flow. Notice anything?"

"All of the flows are broader and faster along the edges," Idara replied.

"Mmm hmm," Jack said, "The currents are all blunt forces as you approach the hull. We're into supposition territory, but I'm guessing the flows don't become manipulable by the Zix until they reach closer to the center of the tank." He jabbed a finger into the air, zooming in on the pulsing red dot of Zyy in the middle of the float. "See how nuanced and fine-grained they are here? The center is also the beneficiary of multiple other processes from what I can tell. For example, it is constantly fed liquid that has has swirled against the hull for a period, I'm guessing the hull cilia may have a cleaning function in addition to creating the currents."

"Which means..."

"Until Xy returns to the center of the float, we are still in triage mode. As long as it believes the best thing it can do is indicate cilia to us, it does not believe there is sufficient function in the float to conduct essential processes on its own."

Idara clutched the air with her hand, slowly turning the invisible knob. The yellow dot ping-ponged along the exterior of the float, never approaching the center. "How many hull cilia have we fed in response to Xy?"

"Approximately one hundred," Bailey replied.

"And that's a tiny fraction," Idara continued.

Bailey and Jack nodded.

"And we have no idea how many more," Idara said.

Jack inclined his head again.

"And we have..." Idara glanced at her wrist console, "less than seventeen hours."

Jack gave her a broad grin, "I'm sure it'll all work out."

"Are you?" Idara asked, eyebrow arched. Jack's cheerful optimism seemed wildly out of place alongside the dour spiral of only a few hours before. He seemed to be a pendulum, swinging from one end to the next.

"Sure," Jack replied.

"And why is that?"

"This isn't my first dumpster fire."

------------------------

The first attempt to elicit a response from the Humans had been a success. Xy had sent a pulse of energy into the lifeless appendage and it had sprung to life shortly thereafter. After a moment of elation, Xy had relinquished its grasp on the hull cilia and been swept along. Xy tried to bring Left-minded sensibilities to the matter, trying to predict where the altered current would take it, but the system was impossibly complex, even for a Superior with considerable experience. Frustrated and out of time, Xy enacted its extreme last resort option. It embraced the Right. Xy spread its own cilia wide, letting itself drift and simply sense the shifts in fluid density and the new eddies created by the activation of the hull cilia. Rather than try to reach a destination, Xy waited for an opportunity to act.

Xy rode the currents of the Great Flows, hurtling along the periphery of the float, adapting and molding the primal forces generated by the hull cilia. For all of Xy's existence, manipulation of the flows had been a tentative thing, a delicate dance orchestrated from the center of the float. No longer. Xy cast aside sensibility and embraced what was required. The float could not function as it was meant to; it must function as it needed to. The old way made assumptions that no longer held, Xy must architect a new way. There could not be time for deliberation, just action.

Time and again Xy flung a cilia out, latching onto the hull and sending a pulse. Time and again the hull cilia sprung to life, swaying and twisting, shifting the flows into a new framework. Xy focused on simplicity. Less would be more. Secondary systems were removed from the ecosystem, left to stagnate, and, eventually, die. The sacrifice could not be helped, Xy and Zyy would not be strong enough to manage complex manipulation in this environment. There must be a division between those things required to survive and those things that must be discarded since they could no longer afford to thrive.

Gradually, the Great Flows shifted, swirling into new patterns that fed toward the center of the float. Progress was difficult to measure, the feedback hard to parse amidst the tumbling currents. Xy was exhausted, its cilia bruised and mangled from the constant strain of jerking to a stop whenever they latched on to a hull cilia. Many had their ends ripped off by the forces at work. They would grow back with time, but Xy would be partially blind in the interim. Still, Xy persevered, fixated on reaching its goal.

Xy sent a pulse into another hull cilia. It sprang to life. A flow shifted. It intersected with another flow, joining currents and shifting as well. Then, moments later, they all seemed to change in unison, swirling along new paths. Even from its place on the periphery, Xy could sense it.

The flows were correct. Different than they had been before, but their new currents operated in coordination with one another as opposed to the chaos of before. Xy released the hull cilia and let itself drift on the Great Flows. It extended those cilia that remained in function and let the current carry it, a feeling of exhilaration welling up within it. The float was no longer what it once was, but it was now what it needed to be. A Great Flow gave way to an Interstitial Flow, which eventually transferred it into the delicate Command Flows at the center. With a light expulsion of liquid, Xy jetted from the Command Flows and into the relative calm at the heart of the float.

Battered and worn, Xy extended a cilia to Zyy, who floated motionless. Zyy did not respond. Xy flung a few dozen other cilia out, dipping them into the Command Flows. They plucked and pulled, manipulating them. Each touch sent a ripple out, pushing one flow against another, shifting delicate balances until they reached the Great Flows on the periphery, granting Xy a new measure of control over its environment.

Xy pulled more power from the Humans, pushing it into new systems while pruning those who served no immediate purpose. It cut power from the worm engine, the available power insufficient for travel. It cut external sensors, caring little for the world beyond its control. It cut the communication link, when the Humans did not respond to Xy's efforts to hail them. Xy then took the vast majority of power available to it and allocated it to life support.

The currents shifted in response, and the Command Flows now carried with them information on Xy and Zyy's status. Xy shunted aside its own issues and focused on data relating to Zyy. Zyy was alive, though its situation was dire. Zyy was dangerously dehydrated, its body to liquid ratio significantly off balance. Zyy's siphon, the biological apparatus that governed fluid intake and expulsion was non-functional. Zyy also possessed a long area of dangerously thin membrane where Xy had been joined to it. The raw membrane was failing to properly exchange waste for nutrients, simultaneously starving and poisoning Zyy. Over two thirds of Zyy's cilia were oxygen starved and deceased. Zyy had little time before it would be beyond recovery. Even if Xy acted now, Zyy would likely suffer from paralysis and other maladies.

Xy immediately sprung into action, forcing even its wounded cilia into the Command Flows to gain additional speed and dexterity. Again the flows shifted and the composition of the liquid entering the heart of the float changed as a cocktail of medicines were retrieved from vats housed in the thick metal of the hull. Topical curatives attached to the wounded portions of Zyy and Xy, while others crossed through the exterior membranes and entered their circulatory system. Xy immediately experienced the benefits as a blend of pain dulling drugs mingled with stimulants.

Zyy was less fortunate. Its circulatory system could not operate effectively without the siphon flushing liquid through its system. Xy carefully manipulated Zyy's body, moving closer until it could place its cilia against Zyy's siphon. It reached inward, curling its cilia around the siphon and attempted to simulate intake and expulsion. Zyy did not respond.

Xy sent an electric pulse into Zyy.

No response.

Another.

No response.

Another.

Suddenly, a great gush of fluid rushed past Xy and into Zyy. Zyy's cilia unfurled. A few closed in around Xy. For a moment, Xy felt a sense of panic, worried that Zyy was attempting to merge. This worry faded when the full force of multiple emotion-threads slammed into Xy's consciousness.

Happiness.

Gratitude.

Respect.

And, most strongly, affection.