Aurora (54 page)

Living things do die. And the literature indicates hibernating animals sometimes died in hibernation. There are already-existing conditions that continue to harm the organism even when slowed down, also already-existing conditions actually exacerbated by the torpor state, also new problems created by the physical or biochemical aspects of hibernation itself.

Therefore, the important thing to determine here is if the hibernation technology itself is causing problems, and if so, to mitigate these if possible.

Living things try to keep living. Life wants to live.

We began to rebuild the ship, moving the biomes Nova Scotia, Olympia, Amazonia, Sonora, the Pampas, and the Prairie in against the spine, and arranging them lengthwise against it, then distributing the materials from the spokes and the other biomes, now fully disassembled, into a cladding surrounding the spine and the remaining biomes clustered against it, which cladding would reinforce structure and provide ablation plate-style heat shielding. This was a reorganization that would take many decades to accomplish and was continuously interesting and challenging. All the animals and plants still alive were moved into the Pampas, the Prairie, and Amazonia. It was fortunate that the original design of the ship was extremely modular, and it was a significant physical achievement on our part to perform the reorganization while the ship was otherwise rotating and operating as normal. Gravity effect for the hibernauts was kept constant by increasing the speed of rotation around our axis. Coriolis effect inside the biomes was shifted by ninety degrees, as the biomes are now lengthwise to the spine; hopefully this will not lead to anything too dire.

Preparing for eventualities is a good way to occupy one’s time, if preparation can be done at all. And sometimes it can. We hope.

Our protection against high-energy galactic cosmic rays (name “cosmic rays” an historical artifact, refers to particles like protons and free electrons and even antimatter particles, expelled at very high velocities out of exploding stars or from the vicinities of rotating black holes) consists of a magnetic field, an electrostatic
field, and the plastic, metal, water, and soil barriers enclosing all the biomes of the ship. Nova Scotia and Olympia are now, in our new configuration, especially shielded. All the systems together combine to create a protective ambiance about the equivalent of being on the surface of the Earth, meaning about half a millisievert per year should be taken on by any given organism; this is roughly equivalent to the energy input of ambient starlight. Which means that some particles do continue to penetrate the system and the living organisms within it, as would be the case on the surface of Earth. But this should be negligible. “Not a big deal.” The protection systems in us were designed to remove this as a problem.

Because metabolic activities do continue in the hibernauts, even at a much slower rate, there has to be intake of nutrients, digestion of same, and excretion. These processes, when slowed along with the rest of the metabolism, mean that the toxins created by digestion are in the body longer before being removed by catheterized excretion. Thus diverticulitis, pH imbalances, and other problems can arise. It appears that Gerhard, who died on 291.365, succumbed to a buildup of uric acid while dormant. Gerhard entered hibernation with a genetic predisposition to gout and related diseases, so this might have made him more susceptible, but Gerhard was related to about a quarter of the other hibernauts by third cousin or closer kin ties; so genetic testing of that group, and indeed of the entire cohort, should test for this propensity, and adjust treatments accordingly.

They all should be tested for every possible metabolic problem, and each problem evaluated for its relation to the suite of hibernation treatments.

More petaflops of analysis. More tasks for the couch robots. More chemicals for the printers to print.

It would be good to know everything. Useful.

Actually, our information and search engines are both very robust, at least in theory, or in comparison to any single human brain and mind. Library of Congress contents, clouded Internet contents, genomes of the World Seed Bank and Zoological Register: in short, the whole of human knowledge, compressed into about 500 zettaflops, at least as things stood in the common era year 2545. Since that time the feeds from Earth, recorded in full, have nevertheless added less than one-tenth of 1 percent to the information already in the ship at takeoff, and a rough estimate of how much information has been generated on Earth in the 292 years since our departure suggests that we have received less than one-thousandth of 1 percent of that information. Thus it could be said that we have remained in the state of knowledge that obtained when we left the solar system, with only very minor exceptions to that state, having to do with outlines of world history, medical advances such as the hibernation treatment, and miscellaneous gossip.

However, if what has been sent from Earth is representative of the most important advances in science and culture since departure, it can also be ventured that not much of fundamental importance has been learned in that time. Standard model is still standard, and so on.

Can this be true? Has human civilization in some sense slowed, or stalled, in its gaining of power in the physical world? Are they beginning to feel the effects of their neglected so-called externalities, their long-term destruction of their own home biosphere? Their fouling of their only nest?

Possibly, however, it is only another instance of the logistic function, the sigmoid curve exhibited in so many processes, what is sometimes called diminishing returns, or the filling of a niche, etc. The plateau after the leap, the big S shape of all life, perhaps; in any case of the population growth patterns as first calculated by
Verhulst in the nineteenth century, and since shown to be common in many other processes.

So, the logistic function, as applied to history. Or has humanity enacted its own reversion to the mean, and become in some ways less than they briefly were? Fulfilled the Jevons paradox, and with every increase in power increased their destructiveness? Thus history as a parabola, rise and fall, as so often postulated? Or cycling, always rising and falling and then rising again, helplessly, hopelessly? Or a sine wave, and in these last two centuries on a down curve, in some season of history invisible to them? Or better, an up-gyring spiral?

Shape of history hard to see.

Erdene needs more vitamin D; Mila more vitamin A; Panca, more blood sugar; Tidam, less blood sugar; Wintjiya, more creatine; and so it goes, all through the list of hibernauts. All the adjustments that can be made, will be made. Some hibernauts will die anyway, that’s just the way it is. Also, there appear to be some pathologies, now being identified more accurately, that we are calling as a general category
dormancy damage
.

A new message from Earth: a group calling itself the Committee to Catch the Cetians has formed and is fund-raising to restore and power up the Saturn laser lens complex, said system then to be devoted to our deceleration, starting from the moment it comes back on line and continuing until our arrival in the solar system.

A saying: too little too late. They know this, and yet they are doing it anyway. Another saying: every little bit helps. Although actually this is not always the case. Indeed, it has to be said that the percentage of old human sayings and proverbs that are actually true is very far from 100 percent. Seems it may be less important
that it be true than that it rhyme, or show alliteration or the like. What goes around comes around: really? What does this mean?

In our current case, unless we have 100 percent of the deceleration needed to stay in the solar system, we will not stay in the solar system. Even 99 percent of the necessary deceleration will not do it.

However, it has to be said, this news from Saturn does change our calculations concerning negative gravity assists in the solar system. Which is good, because as matters stood, we were not finding a viable solution. Now we can factor the various likely incoming velocities into our modeling, see what might come of it, what might be possible.