Friday, January 31, 2025

The Realm: A Novel - Chapter 5

Third Printing – February 2025

Future Chron Publishing

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission, except in the case of brief quotations for the purpose of review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events and people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Future Adventure SF

Chapter 5

3160.4 AD

Sci-pedia - The Online Resource for Science – Ems

Emulated brains (also known as Emmies when in personal assistant devices), were the first form of artificial intelligence created. The first Em dates from the early twenty-second century.

Ems are created by scanning a human brain and loading the resultant data into a computer. At first the scanning of the brain required the person to be deceased. Eventually a way to scan the brain of a living person was developed.

Once the Em is in the computer it can bud (that is recreate or copy itself) as many times as it deems necessary to accomplish the task it has undertaken.

Ems became associated in families that were named after world cities such as Beijing, New Delhi, New York, etc. Their individual names usually begin with Bud and then a two-digit number representing the original brain from which a copy was made (less than 100 brains were ever copied). Then a four-digit number representing the budding order within the family.

Families of Ems exist to do certain tasks. Hiring out as experts, such as maintaining a power plant, a habitat's environment, a light-sail's trim, or powering a personal AI assistant, in this way Ems can support themselves and the other members of their family . . .

The development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI or Aggies) on Earth caused opportunities for Ems to become somewhat limited. The Ems responded by moving their base of operations out into the Solar System and . . .

Erin looked up into the dark sky of Maripol.

Someday I'll see the stars.

She looked at Maxwell.

“Maxwell, how is your knee?”

Maxwell knew that Erin was asking about his actuator.

“It is sixty-two percent Erin.”

“It's not a problem with your motion?”

“Not yet Miss.”

“Well let's continue, shall we?”

“Of course, Miss.”

One reason that Maxwell was having trouble with his knee was the extra weight he had been carrying since the donkey-bot had failed. It had been months since they had left the settlement, and they would need to find the ePod soon or more than Maxwell's actuator would be in trouble.

“Just a little longer Maxwell. I'm sure we are getting close.”

Maxwell didn't understand Erin's optimism. Even with his element radar, called EDAR (Element Detection And Ranging), that could identify the elements of the object causing the return signal, Maxwell figured they had only covered sixty percent of the search area in which he expected to find the ePod. And with the way his actuator was failing and the level of Erin's supplies he wasn't sure they would ever complete their search.

The Realm: A Novel - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

3145.4 AD

Humans have a knack for turning the extraordinary into the mundane and the mundane into a nightmare.

- The Great Gramps

Jack had sat down. He wasn't hungry or tired yet, but eventually he would have to find shelter to eat because the suit could only provide water, breathable air, and elimination services. Although he had in his suit pouch some rations, Maxwell was carrying most of them, it would be best to find a shelter from the caustic dust driven by the wind. He didn't want to inhale it while trying to eat.

His mind continued to wander, he had his eyes closed for some time before he realized it was light, or as light as it gets on Maripol, which was almost dusk-like.

Jack focused his eyes and realized he could see maybe a hundred feet in each direction. He appeared to be sitting on a narrow ledge beside a path that was skirting a hillside. The hill was on one side, a drop of some twenty to thirty feet on the other. Jack was glad he had waited until light to move.

But where was Maxwell? Then Jack realized he hadn't keyed his mic recently. That wasn't good if Maxwell was still trying to find him. And maybe this hill wasn't helping either. The question now was which direction should he take? Should he try to get back to Maripolis? He thought that to his right lay Maripolis and Maxwell was to his left, but he was no longer sure. And now he wasn't sure whether to seek Maxwell or Maripolis. Jack just sat there for some time.

Eventually, he decided to try to find Maxwell and the ePod, that's why he had left the settlement in the first place. He proceeded in the direction he thought he was going before he had sat down. Once he had cleared the hill the path broadened out, actually the path disappeared, and Jack had several directions he could choose. After a minute of indecision, the view cleared momentarily, and he began walking to what appeared to be some hills in the distance.

Hours later he was still walking and very hungry. He was strongly tempted to try and eat out in the open, but he knew it would be foolish to risk scaring his lungs with the ever-roiling atmospheric dust. He hoped at least Maxwell would find the ePod, Jack was resigned to just find someplace he could eat. Almost to the end of his strength he arrived at the hills. He turned to walk along the hillside, looking for some shelter. He stumbled and fell.

Jack roused himself in a few minutes and continued walking along the hillside looking for any opening or cover. He eventually noticed the small hole, only slightly wider than is body, maybe large enough to squirm into and eat something. He started into the opening, after crawling for what seemed an eternity the hole enlarged and started sloping down. Jack slid down the slope headfirst only just managing to turn his body so that he didn't land on his head.

As he recovered, he turned on his light. His refuge wasn't very large, but it was big enough to take the food out of his pouch and have his suit uncover his face briefly while he took a bite. He ate without thinking much about what he would do next.

The Realm: A Novel - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

3113.8 AD

Metric Engineering, 10^thEdition by Dr. Dagmar Mach - Copyright 3001 C.E. - Chapter 2, Pg. 29

The Mach Device

Because of the importance of the link drive to today's space transport, it is important to understand its predecessor on which it is built.

The wormhole drive was invented by Dr. Elias Mach in the 26^thCentury.

The design of a wormhole generator and therefore a wormhole drive is a materials problem. The Mach device is made up of three layers, each with its own special characteristics. The innermost layer provides a solid support for the outer layers and contains the material which supplies the negative mass or exotic mass needed to open a wormhole mouth. In a fusion ship this layer is adhered to the outer surface of the crew wheel.

Next is the actuator layer which drives the Mach effect in the outermost layer and is usually made of a PZT (lead-zirconium-titanate) composite. A large voltage is supplied to this layer and driven with a sinusoidal signal.

The outer layer, the Mach layer, is made from a material with a large capacity for internal energy changes. And when it is driven by a quickly ramping voltage applied to the actuator layer, it will shield the innermost layer from the universal mass exposing the large and negative (or exotic) bare mass of the layer's electrons. This large mass with its repulsive gravity can open and keep open a wormhole.

The final essential element for designing a wormhole generator is that the layers should be in acceleration. In the case of a fusion ship this is usually accomplished through the rotation of the crew wheel, always remembering that a change in direction is also an acceleration . . .

Jack Jones was considered somewhat advanced for his age but really on Maripol kids had to be advanced for their age. Living underground on a planet with a hostile atmosphere and with an aging technology base accelerated their maturation. And right now, Jack and his friend Mart were worried about more than what they would do for the evening.

“How much longer do you figure Mart?”

“I don't know for sure, but I suspect you and I will be facing the failure before we get too old.”

“Yeah,” said Jack. “That's what I figure. But I don't know what we can do.”

“We've got to find the ePod,” said Mart.

“You mean Great Gramps'?”

“Yes,” said Mart, “it's supposed to contain all his wisdom. You should know, he's your great granddad.”

“I know, but I have no idea how. It's on the surface somewhere and we don't even have suits that fit for such an expedition. Even if we knew exactly where we were going.”

“Well, we know the general area and we've got a few years, we don't have to find it overnight, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Jack.

State of the Writer - January 2025

Since I am going in for a medical procedure next week, it seems like a good time for a SOTW post. The procedure is an upper GI as an outpatient, so it shouldn't sideline me too long.

Good sales this month, over 60 books so far. But that only means that a few people found me and bought a couple of series each. Still far from great, but I do like that my stories are being read.

I recently started a Patreon page ( D.W. Patterson | Hard Science Fiction and Adventure SF | Patreon ) to try to reach more people. It's only been up a week and some have viewed but no one has tried a story yet. So, I decided to see if maybe the process was too cumbersome. I'm hesitant to post my material on Patreon, so, I had hoped that people would download it from my online store for no extra charge.

But maybe that's too much trouble?

The Realm: A Novel - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

3000.5 AD

You can't take it with you, and you can't orbit a planet forever.

- The Great Gramps

Maintaining the aeroponics was simple yet involved. The roots of the plants were exposed to the air and received a mist of water and nutrients. This was usually automatic but there was often the need for intervention to address the condition of the plants. This is why Thomas and Jackson became food wranglers after some brief training from Mr. Hamby.

One plus about aeroponics was that when the ship was orbiting a star, light guides, mirrors, and diffusers were used to bring the starlight to the plants. It was therefore, a bright and calm place to work, probably the best place on the ship. The two competently spent their days working with the plants, although still somewhat distracted by their failure to find the ship's location.

“Thomas, I wonder if we could not reverse the view of the Atlas sheets?” asked Jackson.

“You mean the star charts?” said Thomas Jones.

“Yeah, us astronomers call them Atlas sheets. Anyway, as of now they show you the stars from the point of view of a person inside the view bubble. If what we think is true, namely that we are far past their mapping sphere, then we are on the outside of the view bubble looking in. We need to translate the entire database appropriately.”

“Well, we could ask the Ems to run such a transformation if there is enough calculating power and memory,” said Thomas Jones.

The pair started the process of inverting the Atlas sheets which showed slices of the sky out to fifty-thousand light-years from Earth. But the work was interrupted by human folly, a mutiny among the crew.

The Realm: A Novel - Chapter 1

Below is a sample of my new novel "The Realm." I will be adding to this sample soon. It is not published yet but has had a couple of edit passes. Also, it is finished and will be published in the next few months if you would like to read the rest.

THE

REALM

A Novel

D.W. PATTERSON

Second Printing – , 2025

Future Chron Publishing

Future Adventure SF

DEDICATION

To Sarah

I find that people who want to “change the world” really want to change the way others think, to make others think the same as they do. But people that want to improve the world want to make it better, like improving agriculture to support another billion people, or improving medical knowledge to save another billion lives. So, improve the world, don't change it.

The Great Gramps

3000.1 AD

Chapter 1

Sci-pedia - The Online Resource for Science – Spin-two Drive or Link Drive

The Link Drive came out of the science of Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG). LQG was developed in the twenty-first century by physicists to meld quantum mechanics and general relativity into one. Just as in quantum mechanics, which describes the smallest quanta, the photon for instance, loop quantum gravity describes a smallest quanta of volume (and area). This idea has great appeal because if there is a smallest quanta of volume then it would be impossible for a singularity to form, and physics would still apply even inside a black hole and at the big bang (which wouldn't exactly be a big bang but a big bounce).

Another aspect of loop quantum gravity is that the links (based on quantum entanglement and action-at-a-distance) that make up the loops stitching together the quanta volumes of spacetime are usually local. But not always. It is possible that a link between nodes of volume could have been established and then separated. Somewhere across the universe then could be an entangled quanta of volume corresponding to a local quanta of volume . . .

Spin-two is a reference to the particle of gravity, the graviton, although spin one-half particles (fermions) are more important to the drive's operation.

To develop the spin-two drive Dr. Dagmar Mach used the previous space drive, the wormhole drive invented by his mentor Elias Mach, to cast exotic mass-energy (which has a repulsive gravitational effect) into nonlocal links which for all intent and purposes act like narrow wormholes.

The cast energy of the link drive causes fermionic particles, particles with one-half quantum spin, to flip their spin (say from up to down). The nonlocal partners to these fermions, entangled particles in other words, assume the opposite spin state. By modulating the mass-energy, a pulse can travel down the nonlocal link at a frequency determined by the spin-two drive.

Using the drive's ability to create pulsating “bubbles” of negative mass-energy a ship inserted into the nonlocal link is pulled and pushed along to the far end.

Once the ship enters the link the drive shuts down and the decaying pulses eventually allow the link to “relax” to its original state. By that time the ship has already emerged at the nonlocal destination. The link portals now decay completely and the nonlocal tunnel closes.

The advantages of the spin-two drive over the earlier wormhole drive are many. Because the spin-two drive is opening an already existing mini-wormhole link the exotic mass-energy needed is one-tenth that of a wormhole drive which must force the wormhole open from beginning to end in the wormhole dimension.

Another advantage is that the nonlocal links are by definition usually connecting regions of space that are far removed. Jumps of a thousand light-years are common compared to the forty light-year jumps possible with the wormhole drive. In fact, there is no limit to the jump distant but because the distribution of jump lengths is gaussian, very long links are harder to find in the quantum foam and therefore it takes a longer and longer time to find the link and make the jump . . .

“That's impossible,” said Captain Henderson, the graying thirty-year veteran of the space lanes who would be retiring soon.

“I know sir, but the navigational Ems aren't able to find any references,” said his First Officer, Brandon Sykes, called “Handsome Brandon” by some.

“Well, run it through again F.O. We couldn't have linked so far that the Ems are lost.”

“Yes sir, I'll double check,” said Sykes.

Sykes knew it was impossible, just as the captain had said, but he also knew that the Ems were lost.

The Emulated Brains, Ems for short, handled most of the tasks aboard the fusion ship Starflyer. Such artificial intelligence had handled similar tasks for humans for over a thousand years. If stumped by a problem or task, an Em would bud itself, that is create more Ems in the computer, to help with the task. But this time it was no use; the ship really had linked beyond any possibility of assigning coordinates to its location.

It was impossible, but it had happened.

“Okay Brand, I believe you,” said the captain when presented with the results of the re-analysis. “We better have a meeting.”

“I don't know Captain,” said the resident astronomer, Jackson Jones.

The officers and other specialists were having a meeting in the wardroom.

“We know they can navigate out to fifty thousand light-years for sure and I would think double that at least,” he said.

“So that puts us beyond one-hundred thousand light-years?”

“Sorry I can't be more exact sir,” said Jones.

“Okay Dr. Jones, I want you to work with Commander Sykes to see if you two can get a better estimate for me. Meanwhile, I see no reason to link someplace else until we know where we are. But I do want some scans of the local space. Find the nearest stars and star systems. We need to look for a port that will at least provide us with the light energy we need to renew our isotopics. You can help Dr. Jones with that task,” said the captain to the man sitting next to Jones.

As Jones knew, a fourth generation-plus fusion spaceship was almost completely self-contained as long as a source of energy could be found to renew its isotopics, the nuclear energy storage system that acted like a battery bank.

The captain continued, “Everyone else, I need you to watch the crew, make sure you head off any unwanted action.”

“What do you mean Captain?” asked someone.

“I mean that when the crew find out that we are lost in space they may react in a way that endangers themselves and, or the ship.”

“When will they find out sir?”

“Immediately, I intend to announce it right after this meeting. I don't want them speculating that we are keeping something from them.”

After looking around the table the captain dismissed the meeting before getting on the comm to announce the ship's predicament.

January 2025 Book Releases

The Lunar Series which is about the settlement of the Moon after the initial exploration and scientific missions will be complete in individual ebooks and in the paperback series Remembered Earth this month. The series takes advantage of the fact that on the northern edge of Mare Frigoris, about thirty degrees south of the Moon's north pole, there are many impact craters which appear to contain ice water permanently shielded by their southern rim from the Sun. The settlements of the series take advantage of that ice.

Also complete in ebook and paperback will be the Null Infinity trilogy. This series develops the new space drive system called the boundary-drive (although at first it was called something else). It's also a love story between the two developers of the drive and, after marriage, their children.

This story grew out of my interest in faster-than-light (FTL) propulsion. It's the only reasonable way to explore much beyond the Solar System. But the theory of relativity forbids it, so far. Even reading about Star Trek like warp drives, I found that even if possible, getting the warp bubble traveling faster than the speed of light might still be impossible.

So, I took the idea of a bubble in spacetime, which is talked about in several scientific papers that I read and thought about how to accelerate it beyond light speed. The basic idea was that if a bubble of spacetime could be created, then it would move off like an air bubble underwater, although I assumed it could move in more than one direction.

I could then allow the bubble to engulf a ship and we're off. But even with a traveling bubble of spacetime, I still had to accelerate it beyond the speed of light without breaking the law. So, I took a hint from the theory of large extra-dimensions (see Warped Passages for example) and decided that if I could get the bubble into the extra-dimension, the different physics there would allow it to go FTL.

I used other hints from physics to solve problems as I proceeded (such as brane theory to locate more than one universe in my large extra-dimension). I'm now using the boundary-drive in a novel that I am currently working on.

The books released this month chronologically:

Hard Science Fiction - Old School

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