Robot Planet Sample

In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle it must never out step, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars ...

Jules Verne

TO THE READER

The technology and science used in this story is defined as it is introduced. Much of the science and technology was developed in my Wormhole Series of books (Mach's Metric, Mach's Mission, Mach's Legacy) and in the book Spin-Two. So any readers of those books may recognize a certain redundancy in the definitions. Some were copied as is, others were slightly changed (improved I hope). This was a necessity if the books were also to be read as standalone novels.

Note also that this book is set in the same universe as the above mentioned books, with some of the same characters.

1

Sci-pedia

The Online Resource for Science

Spin-Two Drive

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

To develop the spin-two drive Dr. Dagmar Mach used the existent wormhole drive's ability to cast exotic mass-energy (negative mass-energy) into nonlocal links which for all intent and purposes act like narrow wormholes. (Nonlocal describes particles that are too far apart to causally affect each other.)

The cast energy 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 drives 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 older wormhole drive are many. Because the spin-two drive is only opening an already existing wormhole like 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 six-thousand light-years have become common, compared to the forty light-year jumps possible with the wormhole drive. In fact there is no physical limit to the jump distance but because the distribution of jump lengths follow a Gaussian distribution (Lotka's Law) very long links are harder to find in the quantum foam and therefore it takes a longer and longer time to make very long jumps . . .

Humankind had made many false starts on their way to becoming a space-faring species. Some had hesitated because they were dismayed at the costs and turned to controlling the limited resources on Earth rather than trying to expand those resources through space exploration and development. Others were dismissive of man's capabilities in space. They had no faith in mankind even though they expected their fellow citizens to make sacrifices for some cherished ideology.

Then there were those who believed it would be best for the Earth and also the universe if mankind simply quit striving and stagnated to death.

But nothing had stopped simple human inventiveness and the relatively recent development of the spin-two drive, which had superseded the less capable but sufficient for its time wormhole drive, had increased humanity's reach into space by a factor of at least a thousand.

Humanity was farther out now, farther from Earth than ever before. With the new drive, they were now tentatively exploring the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way and there they had made a discovery, a discovery that mankind had longed for ever since he looked up into the night sky and wondered. A discovery that threatened to answer an eternity of dreams with a nightmare ever after if humanity didn't prove to be capable of making the right choice. And it wasn't only humanity's choice . . .

Game-changing events usually start in obscurity, if only they would stay that way.

The road to the bison ranch was long. Darryl was traveling it for the hundredth time bringing the stuff to the ranch that the drones couldn't deliver. Darryl was the ranch's least important employee, the last man on every list.

The vehicle he was driving was a large delivery van that had a failed self-driving droid. The ranch was like that, almost everything there was used in a manner that was not its intended use and took the maximum of human input. But no one complained, it was better than being confined in a couple of rooms of one of the huge tower complex buildings where ninety percent of the population of Earth now lived.

Out here it was a throwback to a time when people had some direct influence on the outcome of their life. Darryl appreciated the freedom even though the pay and board weren't that good. Driving through the open country for miles to the ranch was a reward in itself. Out here you could be alone. No one in the tower complexes could think for themselves without taking into account their neighbor's thoughts.

The sky was low today, clouds coming from the coast as a weather system moved across. Because of the low ceiling, Darryl almost missed the bright bubble of light in the clouds but he couldn't have missed the result. Darryl was watching as the light blinked out and held his gaze for a moment. A moment too long.

“What the . . .” he said as he put the truck into a sideways skid to shed its momentum. The truck slid to a stop with only a slight whumpf as it encountered the object. Darryl turned to look out his side window only to see what looked to be a wall of dirt. He quickly slid to the other side and exited through that door.

Walking backward, all the while looking up, he beheld what seemed a chunk of earth maybe fifty feet high and as far as he could tell slightly wedge-shaped like the top was somewhat overhanging. It was probably a hundred feet in diameter and round. Darryl began to move at an angle to the object.

At the top of this mound of earth, if that was what it was, he saw some kind of vegetation with an unbelievable color. A kind of green-red iridescent. Darryl may have been more curious except at that moment right behind him another huge mound of dirt hit and shook the ground with a huge roar that sounded like an incoming artillery shell. It blocked the road in that direction. He felt trapped and almost panicky, what if he were in the wrong place when one of the mounds fell from the sky?

Darryl ran back to the truck and started it up. He felt the ground shake as before, though he couldn't see it he knew from the shaking that another mound had hit. He turned the wheel sharply away from the wall of dirt that the truck was resting against and mashed the accelerator. At first, the truck was slow to respond as Darryl heard the scraping sound of the truck's side against the wall of dirt. But soon it broke free and Darryl was driving as fast as he could around the obstacle. It was then that he saw mound after mound set down on the floor of the valley he was traveling through. Darryl quit looking and focused on regaining the road so that he could increase his speed and get out of “Giant Valley” as the old-timers called it.

Jim Owens had heard what that crazy Hiff boy had been saying but he didn't believe it until the government showed up. Now they had blocked off the valley road and Jim would have to take his horses to the buyers over the mountains. It was the long way and the horses didn't like being penned up that long. He could rent a Em-piloted sky-transport but that was expensive compared to his horse trailer. The Ems might run the tower complexes efficiently but out here they were useless.

Up in the mountains, the roads weren't so well maintained because the traffic was light. Jim would have to be careful especially after dark to avoid any problems with broken stretches of roadway. But if he didn't have to stop he should be down and out of the mountains by morning and almost at his destination.

It was almost midnight and Jim had the windows down and the music cranked to keep himself awake. He saw the road sign at the last minute and wasn't sure what it indicated. He slowed down anyway and turned on all the truck's lights. There was another warning sign and just beyond Jim saw the reason why. The road was carved out as if someone had taken a huge ladle and scraped from one side to the other. It was a deep gouge but the sides were shallow so Jim thought he could wrestle the truck and trailer across.

He had the truck down one side and had started up the other when the trailer hitch broke. Jim had to spend a minute cussing before he got out of the truck. Another minute was spent in exclamation when he saw the broken hitch. He was disturbing the horses.

Before he bent down to see what was the damage a bright light from above engulfed him. Shielding his eyes with his hand he looked up but still couldn't see anything. He felt his skin prickling and then a sensation of falling, upward.

A moment and he was standing in a large room with a high ceiling. The walls, floors and ceiling all seemed luminescent. The truck and trailer were before him with the truck still running. He moved to turn it off.

As he was sitting in the quiet of the truck a door recessed into the far wall. What looked like a man appeared on a screen that almost covered one wall. As Jim stared he could see the man was almost bald and likely of small stature. His facial features were childish.

Just like a scientist, thought Jim.

He got out of the truck.

Then the being said, “Welcome.”

Jim hesitated.

“Where am I?”

“I'm afraid that isn't important. You were brought here as a test and it seems to have been successful.”

Jim was starting to dislike the little man.

“Very well then who are you?”

“Again that is unimportant. We will be sending you back shortly.”

“You're going to send me back without repairing my trailer hitch and into that hole? That sir is abominable.”

“Get back in your vehicle the transfer will begin immediately.”

The little man turned and the wallscreen went blank.

Jim was tempted to charge the wallscreen but what good would that do? Then he felt the prickling on his skin as he had before. He jumped into the truck as the sensation got most intense.

Then it was over. Jim was sitting in his truck staring through the windshield. It was obvious he was back in the mountains. Then he noticed. They had returned him to the road but on the wrong side of the trench.

Damn!

Corporal Wright thought it strange. He had been assigned to take a vehicle and reconnoiter the mountain road. He was supposed to watch out for any unusual luminescence. He had found a locked truck with a broken trailer hitch and an empty horse trailer in the middle of the road. Just beyond it looked like a washout except there had been no great storms in the area for some time.

Later after making his way across the washout, he had found a man on horseback with three other horses trailing. He said his name was Jim Owens and he was taking his horses to sale and that was his abandoned truck the Corporal had found.

He had then started talking about lights and little men and rooms with huge wallscreens. Wright listened attentively shaking his head as if in agreement. The last thing he wanted to do was upset the man as it was obvious he had some serious problems.

After parting the Corporal radioed for backup to meet him further down the mountain where they would wait for Owens to show up and quietly take him into custody. The Captain had specifically said he didn't want any crazy stories spreading about what was happening in the valley or up on the mountain.

2

Sci-pedia

The Online Resource for Science

Artificial Intelligence

ANI

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI or Annie) 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 . . .

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. Whole families of Ems exist to do certain tasks. Hiring out as experts, such as maintaining a power plant, a habitat's environment, a lightsail's trim, or powering a personal Emmie, Ems can support themselves and the other members of their family . . .

Buds were known by their numbers but all were called Bud. For instance, Bud 29-3458 identified a bud derived from the twenty-ninth original emulated brain. And uniquely as the thirty-four hundredth and fifty-eight budding. Original Ems numbered around one hundred but there were millions of buds.

AGI

The advent of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI or Aggie) in the early 22^nd Century led to a “Golden Age” for Earth as the Earth's governments contracted with the Aggies to manage the ever growing cities (known as tower complexes).

This arrangement worked until the 25^th Century when a break-away faction of Aggies (called Beleni or “The Shining Ones”) attacked those Aggies left on Earth. The resulting Aggie Wars caused damage to the tower complexes and loss of life. The meta-verse, a virtual world in which billions of virtual citizens lived, built and maintained by the Earth Aggies was almost completely lost. The outcry from the survivors of this war caused the Earth's governments to sever their relationships with the Aggies. The Earth Aggies disappeared into space.

Without Aggie management the Earth fell into a Dark Age while governments floundered. The distress was to last for a hundreds of years until the Aggies returned . . .

Dagmar was an Em. That is an Em-based robot, an artificial intelligence (AI). Ems had come into existence in the late twenty-first century, indeed Dag himself had been aware for more than two-hundred years.

At six feet two inches, he had an impressive presence which was very human-like. His carbon nanotube outer body, except for his vision receptors, had the unique ability to become almost invisible when a small bias voltage was applied. He had used this ability before when encountering physical opposition.

Dag had worked closely with humans for many years and had learned much about interacting with them. But still their emotional outbursts confused him and he was not sure he would ever understand.

There was still much conjecture among researchers as to why Ems had such trouble with human emotions. Some thought emotions an emergent property that arose from human physical limitations, especially death, something Em-based robots did not experience in the same way as humans.

Dr. Dagmar Mach (the last name an honorary bequest of his mentor Dr. Elias Mach) was proud of being a robot and never tried to hide that fact.

Dag had come to the planet New Adowa, some three-hundred light-years from his former home, Alpha Centauri to assist the New Gallan government in extending the reach of the spin-two drive. As seen from Earth, New Adowa lay in the direction of the Draco constellation. The Earth's old pole star Thuban (during the time of the Egyptian pharaohs) was a close companion of the star New Adowa orbited.

Dag had brought his robot friend Sigmund to assist in improving the drive's ability to find links beyond a thousand light-years. Sigmund's intelligence was based on an updated version of Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), a much earlier form of AI than Emulated brains. They had worked closely with both the famous Dr. Mach, inventor of the wormhole drive, and his great-great-granddaughter Dr. Emmy Gibbs who took over Dr. Mach's work when he was killed. They expected to meet with Walker, another Em, who had previously been Dag's assistant.

Dag and Sigmund had taken a shuttle down to the planet's surface. They were in Dag's hotel room which would serve as a base for the work. They had noticed that all the news was about the strange discovery that had turned up when a nonlocal link had been opened far away near the Crab Nebula.

“Dag do you remember what Dr. Mach used to say?”

“I'm not sure Sigmund, what did he say?”

“Well he used to say that there were no surprises if you had imagination.”

“Certainly, no doubt,” said Dag still a bit confused about what they were discussing.

“So you agree then that this latest discovery out near the Crab Nebula is no surprise.”

“Oh, that's what you're talking about. As far as I know everyone's surprised. I mean over six-thousand light-years. I'm impressed they could open a link that far. Even finding such a distant nonlocal link is unusual. And that thing they found, how did it get way out there? They say it's been there for years, years before I developed the spin-two drive. And without the drive there's no way you can get that far out unless it was aliens.”

“Yeah most ascribe it to aliens but that's not imaginative enough Dag, use your imagination. You see?”

“See what Sigmund? I wish you wouldn't be so obtuse.”

“Dag maybe you need a checkup. Could be time for an upgrade.”

“I assure you that all systems are working fine. It's your darned obstinate refusal to speak in a straight forward manner that needs a checkup.”

Sigmund continued, “I don't think it's aliens. I think that someone must have had a spin-two drive before you invented it. No way a wormhole drive could get anything out that far, take too long and the ship would probably fall apart along the way.”

“Well if it's not aliens then it had to be the Aggies Sigmund.”

“That's what I figure. Only those AIs from Earth were pretty much out of the picture at that time.”

“How about that other AI faction, the Beleni? Why couldn't it be them?”

“Their leader was too authoritarian. I don't think any authoritarian regime would have the innate curiosity and necessary freedoms to come up with such a thing.”

“Then who was it Sigmund!”

“I don't know.”

Dag exasperated, could only stare.

“But with a little imagination I think we could figure it out,” added Sigmund. “We just need to . . .”

Sigmund's voice trailed off as Dag held up his hand.

“I'm detecting seismic activity Sigmund. It is very strong, you will feel it shortly.”

That's when the hotel room they were in began to sway. The room lights failed but it wasn't dark. Light poured in from the windows.

Sigmund rushed to a window. As far as he could tell the lights were out everywhere in Arba Harar. But the glow came from the heavens. Looking up Sigmund could only make out a bubble-like structure which was pulsing and then became incandescently bright. Sigmund's image receptors failed him.

A loud pop like an electric transformer blowing followed. The building's frame rippled and some floors folded. Sigmund who had turned to ask Dag for help fell to the floor. The light from outside dimmed, the building stopped its bucking and Dag made his way to where Sigmund had fallen. A quick check showed no activity in the inert form.

It was a week before the power came back. A week in which Dag could do nothing for Sigmund's lifeless bulk. Once power was restored Dag was able to run the diagnostics on his friend's internal problems. It returned failure after failure of critical circuits.

Dag knew that the loud sound, all the electrical transformers on New Adowa blowing at the same time, had to have been caused by an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse of tremendous intensity. That would explain the circuit failures in Sigmund he was now seeing. He knew that his form was better prepared for such an event than Sigmund and not being near the window somewhat shielded him somewhat from the pulse.

Now that the diagnostics had run, he busied himself with replacing the damage in Sigmund from the kit that most robots always carried. Sigmund called it his “organ vault” or “triage kit”.

Finally after hours, the last item pulled from the organ vault by Dag was a datacube carrying all of Sigmund's persona which Sigmund kept backed up at regular intervals.

Once finished it was simply a matter of a few seconds until Sigmund opened his now replaced image receptors.

“Hello Dag. How are you?”

“I'm fine Sigmund and you?”

“Well I see I'm lying on the bed so I assume I have been out of it. Dag, I can't find the local time on the net. As a matter of fact, I don't sense a net. What day is it?”

“You've been asleep for a few days Sigmund. It is 7.15 at 16:18:32 in the Second Interstellar Era.”

“I have been asleep awhile, haven't I? What happened Dag?”

Dag explained all that had occurred since the date of the restored backup which didn't include the incident that had knocked out Sigmund.

“Do they know what caused the pulse?”

“Not exactly but the authorities do know the epicenter. It turned out to be the lab that had opened, and kept open, that nonlocal link to the area near the Crab Nebula.”

“How is that possible Dag? That lab is thousands of miles away.”

“Apparently the energy was sufficient that it 'bounced' from ground to ionosphere around the world. Devastating some areas and skipping others.”

“We were just talking about that when I was knocked out Dag.”

“Now I'll use your theory of imagination Sigmund to conjecture what may have caused the pulse. I believe it was the AI, either the Earth faction or the Beleni or maybe the more mysterious recorder faction, in association with humans.”

“What humans?”

“Those from the two lost expeditions. Remember the wormhole jump-ships sent with settlers to what were then the recently discovered exoplanets in the Trila 4-568 system.”

“I remember those,” said Sigmund. “The first had a problem with a rogue AI before losing contact. The expedition had reported that the stowaway AI had gone berserk resulting in the death of several crew members. Just how many deaths is unknown.

“The other expedition had an even more bizarre experience. Something happened during wormhole boost placing most of the crew and colonists into a form of suspended animation. When the remaining crew tried to initiate wormhole transport back to base they were never heard from again.

“Two fusion ships and over two hundred souls disappeared without a trace. Efforts to find out what had happened were interrupted each time by a general disintegration of society. So called Dark Ages by historians. The similarities between the two missions and their outcomes, at least what is known about the outcomes is intriguing.”

“Very good Sigmund. Well I believe those humans made it somewhere either through happenstance or more likely as a direct result of actions taken by one of the AI factions. Eventually working together they created the incredible engineering marvel that the destroyed lab stumbled upon with its nonlocal link.

“I believe through that nonlocal link from that engineering behemoth came the EMP that destroyed the lab and the surrounding area for hundreds of miles and then bounced from there to here and damaged you.”

Sigmund with a thoughtful look was silent for a moment.

“Well I have to say Dag you've taken my admonishment to use your imagination to heart.”

Dag knew that Sigmund was needling him but he could also tell from Sigmund's hesitancy that what he had said had left an impression.

3

Sci-pedia

The Online Resource for Science

Nonlocal Links

In loop quantum gravity, links that make up the loops stitching together the quanta volumes of spacetime are usually local, that is they are causally related. But not always. It is possible that a link between nodes of volume could have been established early in the history of the universe and then the nodes separated. Somewhere across the universe then could be an entangled quanta of volume corresponding to a local quanta of volume.

Surprisingly these links aren't necessarily rare. It's estimated that there could, on average, be more than one per cubic nanometer of space. Not enough to disrupt the smooth aspect of spacetime we experience but enough to explain entanglement of distant particles.

It appears that links follow a kind of power-law, called Lotka's Law, when it comes to their abundance or scarcity as related to the distances they bridge. The farther the distance the scarcer the link.

They can also be used by the Spin-Two drive to send information and mass over vast distances, much farther than a wormhole drive . . .

It didn't take the government long to ask Dag and Sigmund to suspend their drive work and investigate the recent disaster. That was fine with Dag, he had once been a detective.

And Walker had arrived.

An Em-based robot, like Dag, though perhaps a bit more advanced, Walker knew as much about the spin-two drive as Dag since he had worked with him during its development. And they both knew more than any human alive. The three were discussing the situation.

“Aliens,” said Walker.

“You're kidding of course,” said Dag.

“Sir I do not kid. From what I know about this situation the most logical conclusion is that the lab had discovered an alien artifact. That is why the aliens destroyed the link and the lab. Most logical I think.”

Dag was dumbfounded. An Em that believed in aliens.

“Walker,” said Sigmund. “I find that a very interesting hypothesis. I've felt for some time now that we are overdue to find aliens. And as you say it fits the facts as we know them.”

Again Dag was dumbfounded hearing Sigmund reverse himself with no real evidence.

“Sigmund just a few days ago you were adamant that it wasn't aliens.”

“Well Dag a fellow has to keep an open mind. After all, Walker makes a good case.”

“A good case! It's all conjecture.”

“Is he always so intransigent when presented with the facts Sigmund?”

“As you probably know Walker, Dag use to be a hard-boiled detective. So you'll have to allow a little leeway. I'm afraid his years of sleuthing has left him a bit jaded.”

“Ah, of course then. Well Dag let's just call my ah, conjecture, tentative. We'll keep it in the backs of our minds as we gather the evidence, what say?”

“Yes Walker that will be fine. Now let's come up with a plan.”

The plan started with a visit to the area of the incident. A hypersonic airliner would take them to a working airport nearest the disaster. At two thousand miles and a continent away, it would take about an hour. From the airport, the three would take a chartered vertical takeoff jet along with a local government scientist for the final leg.

Dag had brought along a portable quantum entanglement detector. It was a device based on the Casimir effect which could measure the existence of electromagnetic waves, even in a vacuum. The device featured two very close, conducting but uncharged parallel plates which experienced an attractive force caused by the existence of more EM waves outside the plates than between them. This was a result of the requirement that the wavelength or a multiple of the wavelength of an electromagnetic wave had to “fit” between the plates.

It had been learned with the wormhole drive that when an object is transported or teleported through a wormhole the net result is a weakening of the Casimir force. It is as if the number of electromagnetic waves outside the plates has been diminished. This effect is a direct consequence of the “atomizing” of spacetime by the energy from the wormhole drive. In effect, spacetime is breaking down and affecting larger masses and longer wavelength EM waves first, all a result of the loss of entangled particles and volume elements around the wormhole mouth.

“I say Dag, why have you brought the detector?”

“Well if this event was powerful enough to break the quantum entanglements of spacetime then the detector will serve as a kind of gauge on just how powerful it was.”

“And that in turn will tell us the technological level of the aliens. Good thinking Dag.”

Dag was becoming annoyed with Walker's one-track mind. He hadn't been that way when they first worked together. Maybe success was going to his head.

“I remind you Walker we have no reason to believe it was aliens.”

“Except that it satisfies Occam's Razor. It's by far the simplest hypothesis don't you think?”

I'm beginning to wonder if you think very much Walker especially with this idiotic . . .

“I think,” said Sigmund interrupting Dag's thoughts, “that it is an excellent hypothesis until proven otherwise. But we really should let the evidence lead us for now.”

Dag picked up on what Sigmund had said.

“Well said Sigmund, you agree of course Walker?”

“Yes, yes, of course. I'm only thinking out loud, that's all.”

Talking out loud maybe but thinking? I wouldn't call it . . .

Once again Sigmund interrupted Dag's thoughts.

“Still Dag if the detector does show a level of destruction that borders on the disintegration of spacetime. Wouldn't that be quite an advance over our current capabilities? I mean from over six-thousand light-years away?”

“Probably Sigmund but don't forget humankind learned to create that kind of destruction also.”

“Yes I know but not at such a distance.”

“Well the link might have something to do with that.”

“I remember reading about that,” said Walker. “They called it the atomization of space I believe. But of course, you two were there when it happened weren't you?”

“Yes the first time was an accident,” said Dag. “It was caused by two wormhole ships casting the far mouth of their wormholes to the same coordinates. The concentration of energy in such a tiny area caused an abrupt breaking of entangled links like a balloon blow out. The disturbance spread from there, destroying several space habitats before it dissipated.”

“Like a rock dropped in a pond,” said Sigmund. “That is where the old quarantine zone for operation of a wormhole drive came from, it was an attempt to limit the damage if such a thing happened again.”

“And it did Sigmund. But of course, like everything else that humans do, politics prevented the quarantine limit from being set to a real safe limit like one-hundred AU. It would take too long to get there, complained the corporations.”

“That's true Dag but I've learned that you always take what humans are willing to give. You can come back later if you need more.”

Walker spoke up before the discussion got further off track.

“Well it's certainly fortunate that transport by nonlocal links doesn't take so much energy. Now there isn't any danger that a link can cause the atomization of space.”

“That's true if you can find the link you need,” said Sigmund. “Why is that Dag? Why does it take so long to find nonlocal links the farther you want to transport?”

Dag was silent for what seemed like an interminable time. Sigmund was just about to speak again when Dag spoke.

“It appears that links follow a kind of power-law, called Lotka's Law, when it comes to their abundance or scarcity as related to the distances they bridge. The farther the distance the scarcer the nonlocal link. So a link that spans the distance this lab found is very rare.”

The pilot informed his passengers that they would be landing soon.

At the airport, the three robots departed the plane and soon found their next ride and their companion, Dr. Haile Zenawi.

“Gentlemen,” said Dr. Zenawi. “I am pleased to meet you. I will be your guide during your stay in Girawa. I represent both the Girawan government and the Girawa Institute of Science. I myself am a meteorologist by training and I knew the area we are going to well, before the destruction that overtook it.”

The three introduced themselves, then Dag spoke.

“Dr. Zenawi we need to get as close to the epicenter of this phenomenon as possible. In your estimation how close will that be?”

“I believe there is a quarantine zone around the lab's former location of several miles but I will ask the pilot to get as close as he sees fit. As you probably know there is quite a bit of weather being created by the remaining heat of the incident.”

“Thank you Dr. Zenawi we appreciate all you can do.”

This time they would walk a short distance across the tarmac to board the smaller jet.

As Dag looked in the direction they were to fly he could see what looked like a line of clouds stretching across the horizon. Upon boarding the business-like aircraft, Dr. Zenawi went forward to speak with the pilot before taking his seat.

“The pilot assures me he will get as close to the epicenter as he feels safe.”

Dag again expressed his appreciation and soon they were lifting from the ground and heading toward the cloud bank he had seen. Once the plane had translated its vertical velocity to horizontal it was almost no time before they were in the thick gray clouds. Dag was too busy minding his entanglement detector to look but Sigmund provided a running commentary.

“Roll clouds I think. A form of arcus cloud. They must form a concentric circle around ground zero. Ah we're out of that one, here comes another.”

The plane cut through the storm cloud formations easily at first but soon the ride was rougher. The rain was nonstop.

“A bit unusual wouldn't you say Dr. Zenawi?”

“I should say so Sigmund. I'll never get used to these clouds no matter how many times I fly through them. You know what's happening here is affecting the weather all over the planet. The energy to power all of this is tremendous and is just the waste heat from the incident.”

“Fascinating,” said Walker.

“I've got something,” said Dag. “Broken entanglements and increasing.”

“We must be close to the epicenter by now,” said Dr. Zenawi. “I'll just go ask the pilot.”

As he rose the craft dropped abruptly. Zenawi went flying and hit his head on the ceiling. As he fell in the aisle he was already unconscious.

Sigmund could tell that the plane's forward motion had slowed and the engines were now thrusting in a vertical position with a screaming wail. Luckily they were only a few feet off the ground and descending slowly when the wings failed. Sigmund watched them fold and then rip from the plane with the engines still roaring. The plane hit the ground with a thud which was much less than Sigmund expected.

End Sample.