L4 Station - Chapter 2

Copyright © 2025 D.W. Patterson

All rights reserved.

First Printing – March 2025

Future Chron Publishing

Cover – Copyright © 2025 D.W. Patterson

Cover Image – ID 159616182 © limbitech | Dreamstime(dot)com

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.

Hard Science Fiction – Old School

Human Generated Content

Chapter 2

Sci-pedia - The Online Resource for Science – Annies

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI - Annie)

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI or Annie in the vernacular) first became available in the early twenty-first century. It developed out of the machine learning technology that was rapidly evolving at the time. Narrow refers to the fact that often this form of intelligence could only do one function well such as speech, facial recognition, etc.

Eventually some researchers were able to tie together several ANI functions in a neural matrix which allowed the development of the first truly autonomous bipedal robots. Further development in this area was curtailed later in the century as the breakthroughs in emulated brain research promised a more powerful general intelligence.

Some of the later Annie based robots are still existent in specialized areas . . .

My brother Roger was getting antsy again as we waited for the announcement that we could start debarking. My patience with him was wearing thin, so I strongly urged him to be still and stay quiet. He didn't like that and started yelling at me. I popped him just a bit to make him stop and then he started crying. By this time a crew member was standing over us.

“What is going on?” he asked.

“My brother is getting impatient,” I said, “I was just trying to keep him quiet.”

“Okay,” he said. “If you will just come with me.”

I didn't know what to do. I started to turn to look for Mom, but he seemed impatient. So, I unstrapped and stood slowly, remembering my training for zero gravity, which was to not do anything too quickly. I looked at Roger, he seemed to try to be deciding between doing as the man said or crying. Eventually, he did the same as me and got out of his seat.

We went forward with the man when I heard someone behind.

“Where are you taking them?” said my dad.

“They were a bit impatient,” said the man, “so I thought I would take them on a short tour while we are waiting to debark,”

“Oh well then, thank you,” Dad said. “You boys be polite and do everything he says.”

“Okay Dad,” I said.

The LPL was well designed for zero gravity movement. Bars and hand straps were conveniently located for moving oneself along. I was pleased that Roger was taking it seriously and behaving well. We followed the man through a short hallway and into the front control room from which the LPL was operated.

After he introduced us, he explained the different consoles and what they controlled. The room itself seemed large to me but with every inch packed with electronics. I looked at Roger, I don't know if he understood everything, but he seemed fascinated at all the screens and lights, some blinking, different colored.

What struck me most was that the actual windows even up here were small porthole-like and that the crew flew the ship mostly by large video screens. By the time the man was showing us the communications console, I could hear the pilot, introduced as Captain Berman, making the announcement that we could now leave the LPL.

“Okay boys,” said our guide, “I'm afraid that's all for the tour, let's get you back with your family.”

He led us back through the short hall and we joined the rest of the passengers moving to the exit.

Exiting into the fusion ship we all passed through an airlock, two at a time. Roger and I went through together. Once through we waited for mom and dad by holding onto some strap handles on the wall of the room. Then we floated up through a small hatch and emerged into a long hallway. Our guide then had each of us grab one of the overhead moving straps, much like the subway cars in movies, which pulled us slowly along toward the front of the ship. I figured we were somewhere in that long spine of the ship that I had seen in videos.

Now Roger was having fun as he swung like a monkey from his strap. Mom kept telling him to be still, but it was too much of an opportunity to play. He kept swinging wider and wider until his feet caught the side of the hallway, and an alarm went off. The conveyor stopped slowly, but completely. Before long the guide was at our location asking what had happened.

Roger wasn't going to say anything, so I spoke up and told him that my little brother had accidentally brushed the other side of the hallway. The guide couldn't see how that was possible, but he said such an incident could have triggered the emergency shutdown. Being satisfied that he had found the cause he went back to the front of the line and restarted the conveyor. We were on our way again and Roger was a lot more still, especially with mom looking over her shoulder at him every minute or so.

As we got closer to the front I could hear a distant waterfall. But when we arrived at the end of the conveyor it wasn't a waterfall, it was just where the spokes of the wheel originated. I asked the guide what the noise was as he was explaining how we would take an elevator to the boarding platform of the wheel.

“That sound is induced vibration,” he said. “The wheel spins on superconductive bearings. The wheel rotates on these magnetic bearings and is turned with the same mechanism as the maglev train on the Moon. Like an electric motor but with a stator mounted around the rim of the spokes, the rotor magnets mounted in the wheel rim levitate and propel the wheel as an electromagnetic wave of energy rotates around the stator.”

I didn't completely understand but I did know a little about electric motors and could imagine unrolling one.

“But what about the sound?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “while the wheel rotates at about two revolutions per minute, that is the speed at which the electromagnetic wave travels, about nineteen miles per hour at that radius. There are many harmonics higher than two revolutions per minute. And the highest ones are within the range of human hearing. Remember the current of that traveling wave is huge and pulsating, causing vibrational stress on the structures. Those vibrations are transmitted down the spokes through the metal and setup acoustic vibrations here in the atmosphere.”

“Wow,” I said.

“That's what I think too,” he said.

We all lined up to take an elevator to the first level of the rotating wheel. Several of us boarded at a time and were told to hold on to the handrails along the sides and back. The elevator started and I felt the brief acceleration before I was floating again. The elevator rose over one-hundred feet to the stationary inner rim of the wheel.

There we all waited until the rest of the group arrived. At that point out guide started to describe how we would transfer to the rotating level of the wheel.

“As that level rotates above this level, we open some long slit like doors in the roof here and the floor there. You will board these capsules you see in front of you two at a time and strap in. I will show you how, shortly. The capsules begin moving to synchronize with the rotating level above and rise on these mobile platforms from the floor, like a lift. And they are turned by magnetic rollers one-hundred-eighty degrees.

“You will experience this rotation for just a few moments until you are deposited on the floor of the above level where you will then feel an artificial gravity similar to the Moon's gravity. At that point your capsule will open, and you will be aboard the wheel.

“Now, there are several of these areas around the rim and we will distribute you around so that all of you will be on the wheel shortly.”

The guide then chose eight of us to stay where we were while the others were taken to the other boarding areas.

Roger and I would be riding in a capsule together and mom and dad would be in another one. The guide showed us how to strap ourselves into the capsule seats. The capsule closed and soon we could feel it moving. Then we started to spin around. Roger didn't react well to that motion. He was soon sick, and the capsule was a mess, I wasn't spared either.

When the capsule opened on the wheel level, the man who poked his head in to welcome us, quickly withdrew.

I heard him say, “We got another one in capsule two.”

I guess other people reacted as Roger did to the disorienting ride.

Finally, getting out of the capsule and being cleaned up a bit by mom and dad, I heard Roger ask if he could go again. Mom suggested that he had ridden enough for one day.

The gravity felt good again, it was almost indistinguishable from what I was used to on the Moon. A guide was assigned to us and would take us to our apartment on the next level, which I learned to think of as a lower level since all levels were referenced from the outside of the wheel inward, the outer level being designated level 1 and the gravity directed outward.

We moved to another elevator and rode it one floor down where we exited. The guide then led us around the curving hallway. The hallway was twenty feet wide with electric carts going both ways. The very inside against the wall was marked for pedestrian traffic. Looking ahead it was quite apparent that we were in a ring structure because the floor disappeared upward as if a distant hill which never arrived no matter how far you walked.

The guide led us to our apartment. Inside there were three rooms including a bath. The design was most like a motel on the Moon, to be expected since the management was Moon Lodge Incorporated, the company my dad worked for. Two bedrooms, one for Roger and me and one for my parents.

In my bedroom there were bunk beds and a couple of small desktops in each corner. Shelves above the desktops and small closets in the other two corners of the wall where the door was located. Roger jumped on the top bunk immediately and I knew not to argue because he would argue and whine until he got his way.

Back in the main living space was a small living area in the front with couch and chair. In the left back corner when entering there was a small kitchenette separated from the rest of the room by a counter. Next to it was a small hall and on one side was the bathroom with shower and on the other side was a closet. Besides the small closets in the bedroom, it was the only storage space in the apartment.

Mom immediately objected.

“Honey,” she said to dad. “I don't think I can live with such a small storage space. Where am I to keep the cleaning bots? This closet is only big enough for supplies.”

“We have more storage space just down the hall Ursula,” he said. “The bots can stay there when they're not being used.”

“Oh, well, I guess that might work,” she said, “although I can't imagine what the company was thinking if they expect people to live without storage space.”

“I'm sure we will adjust to it, honey,” he said.