The Life Engineered (18 page)

H
eaven is purpose fulfilled.

I know this because that’s my reality. It’s my life. I open my eyes and look around. Billowing clouds surround me as I float amongst them. Golden-yellow pillows of gas cover the sky above, occasionally breached by pillars of harsh sunlight. Thousands of kilometers below my feet I see massive dark-red thunderheads, roiling and twisting at the mercy of monstrous winds.

Paradise above, hell underneath, and I float between them, safely tucked in a serene neutral-buoyancy layer of atmosphere. I’ve been here forever, and I’ll never get bored with it, but if I did, I’d go to a different gas giant and start the process anew. I can’t imagine ever learning all there is to know about this planet or having to move on.

I shut my vision again, confident in the knowledge that there is no place in the galaxy safer than this. For over a decade I’ve been floating here, studying and learning. Eleven years mapping out the weather patterns and interactions of the various gas layers within this seemingly gentle giant. Like most things that appear calm on the surface, however, Cyrene is deeply turbulent under her skin. She wouldn’t be worth studying if she weren’t.

Yet here I float, hidden within a pocket of stability that according to my surveys has persisted for centuries.

I extend the array on my back. Like a pair of skeleton wings, the delicate sensors unfold. Millions of microreceptors specially designed to sniff out every detail of the atmosphere are brought back online, feeding me an endless buffet of information. The chemical composition of the gases around me, pressure, wind speeds all become known to me, not just in my immediate area, but up to several thousand kilometers in every direction.

Who needs to move when you can be everywhere?

This truth is even more apparent when I remember that I can communicate with any of my peers in the galaxy, access any research I need, and contribute to other projects as if I were there, all without leaving the comfort of my own mind.

It’s paradise. Or at least it is until all my sensors lose their collective mind.

Something’s wrong.

My thrusters ignite almost automatically and my “wings” retract. Dozens of automated systems burst to life, and my field of vision is flooded with warnings and alarms. My research is pushed to the periphery, forcing me to focus on the emergency.

Then it hits me. Winds that haven’t penetrated this layer of the atmosphere in hundreds of years ram into me with the force of an asteroid crash. Tossed around like so much debris, I decide that it’s easier not to resist and probably safer too.

The pocket of calm high-density gas I’ve made my home has become a tempest. I open my eyes to see it all for myself, a beautiful atmospheric apocalypse. For a moment I’m frustrated that despite all my research I did not see the maelstrom coming. Years of studying the wind patterns within Cyrene’s oceans of gas, and I’m caught off guard. Yet I somehow put the disappointment aside once confronted by the majesty of it all.

“Sabrina! Are you okay in there?”

Karora cuts in on quancom. There’s a hint of worry, but mostly amused curiosity. After all, I’m in no real danger. As powerful as the superhurricane that spawned out of nowhere might be, there are no other solid objects that I could collide with, and even if there were, my pseudo-plastic shell would be more than enough to protect me. As long as I’m not pulled down too deep within the gas giant, I should be intact.

Karora is the Watson to my Sherlock, or maybe I’m the Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote. It depends on whom you ask. Whatever the case may be, the laborious little Von Neumann has been my partner in crime, chauffeur, and best friend for nearly a full century.

“I’m fine,” I answer, amused by his worry.

The sight is beyond belief! Thick clouds that kept a respectable distance from one another moments before are now colliding and mixing in a complex dance of color and shapes. The entire atmospheric pocket is being crushed between heaven and hell, and I’m caught in the middle and it is glorious. Or rather, it’s glorious for the first few hours. Before long the spectacle gives way to curiosity, and I delve back into my sensor readings, trying to figure out what happened.

“I’m assuming this is all going according to plan?” Karora pipes in.

“On a macrolevel? Sure! I mean, I’m here to learn, aren’t I?”

I try to pretend I’m a consummate scientist, I really do. I take my research seriously, and I do love what I’m studying. Objectively, I should rejoice at this turn of events. After all, isn’t unraveling the mysteries of the universe what science is all about? Yet the ideal loses its luster when the mystery renders decades of work null and void.

“I know you better than that; you’re pissed.”

He’s right, or close enough. I’m angered by the setback, that’s true. I’m also frustrated that I my own fail-safes are preventing me from deploying my sensor array and gathering more data. However, what’s really bothering me is that I don’t know how long this storm is going to last. It could be days, years, or even centuries. Overriding the fail-safes is an option, of course, but they exist for a reason, and having my “wings” plucked from my back would be regrettable to say the least.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m having just as little success up here.”

Karora was performing his own research, if it could be called as much. As fascinated as I might be with theoretical planetary meteorology, my friend was engrossed in experimental research in building better faster-than-light (FTL) methods. To his credit, his breakthroughs in optimizing the standard Alcubierre drive have been adopted across our civilization. However, the real prize Karora is after, artificial wormholes, eludes him even after nearly ninety years of tests.

The Tjurunga, his ship, has undergone so many refits and iterations that it might as well be the proverbial ship of Theseus. In the years since we’ve arrived in this system, Karora has built himself a veritable factory in orbit around Cyrene. I once argued that he should build a new vessel for each prototype, but he called my suggestion “inelegant.”

“What’s the problem this time?” I asked, feigning interest.

“Same as before on a larger scale: can’t stabilize the negative energy necessary to open a wormhole. Scratch that. I can create a stable wormhole, but it leads to an arbitrary position in spacetime. When I stabilize the destination, I collapse the field and lose the entry point.”

Wormhole theory—in fact, all of the theoretical physics behind interstellar and faster-than-light travel—has always flown right over my head. When we first met, Karora would drown me in an avalanche of formulas and figures that made absolutely no sense to me. It took a few years before I realized they meant very little to him either, being borrowed from other Capeks’ research.

“On the bright side,” my friend continued, “it’s very pretty when it fails.”

“Glad you can see the glass half-full,” I replied as I was thrown upwards by the winds. The billowing giants of the upper atmosphere exchanged lightning with their counterparts from below. Enormous forces seeking to balance themselves ionically and chemically. Without my sensors I’m all but blind to the events, relying on short-range optics, my eyes, as my only means of observation.

Screw it. I need to know. With trepidation and for the first time in my 270 years of existence, I override the fail-safes that keep me from injuring myself. The process is exhilarating if a little anticlimactic. There are no hoops to jump through, no redundant security measures. I simply will the system to allow me control, and there it is. The alarms go off, the warnings all but disappear from my vision, and I unfurl my wings once more.

It’s thrilling. I don’t go against the grain often. In fact, even when our civilization fractured, when I was barely 150 years old and Karora sided with Aurvandil’s rebels, I remained loyal. I don’t like to take chances, but now, with my “wings” spread wide and data flooding me once more, I can understand the appeal. The rewards can be worth the . . .

Snap!

Snap? The data stops, and warning notices replace it immediately. Multispectral analyzers are off-line, 90 percent of the anemometers on my left wing are down, while the ones from the right keep returning bad data. Chemical detectors aren’t responding, and the actuator servos on the entire array are spinning without purchase.

My wings are broken. Just in time for the weather event of a lifetime to reach its pinnacle. I can see the vast amounts of energy released in the cataclysm. Clear evidence of precipitation being created by the clash of clouds of different densities is obvious to the naked eye, but I can do nothing to determine the nature of the liquid. At least nothing beyond make an educated guess. This is why I don’t take risks.

I close my eyes, cursing silently to myself. I shut down the warning signals, knowing that my sensors are probably a complete loss at this point or will at the very least require extensive repairs. Maybe Karora can do it. I let myself be rocked by the winds, only complete darkness, shame, and the sound of howling winds to keep me company.

“Sab? Sab!” Karora yells over multiple channels, breaking through my wall of regret.

“What?”

“Check out what’s on the common band. I’m getting a distress call.”

——

“The signal’s already three hours old. It’s on a radio frequency.”

Karora was talking while simultaneously feeding me telemetry about the radio message. The distress call had no words, containing a series of data points like coordinates and a long list of critically damaged systems, most obvious being the quancom node.

“Look at the list of things wrong with that guy!” I blurted out, forgetting the damage I had sustained. “Communications are all but completely destroyed, and a handful of maneuvering thrusters are barely still functioning. His Alcubierre drive is finished; his power plant is venting out too much for his space-fold engine to work. What happened?”

Whoever this Capek was, he obviously belonged to one of the larger classes. I was fairly certain Kamohoali’i, the only known Maximilian Capek, was accounted for, and any Lucretius-class wouldn’t be in the galaxy anymore. This would leave a particularly large Sputnik perhaps.

“Oh crap! Check out the bottom of the list!” There was a mix of worry and excitement in my partner’s tone, which urged me to skip to the last few dozen entries.

Scratch that. Why does he have so many weapons to begin with?” “I know who this is!” I’d seldom heard so much awe and won

derment coming from a fellow Capek.

“Pick me up! I want to see this!”

Immediately, I activated my main thruster. I’m not built for

power. From the day I left the Nursery, I knew I was going to

spend the majority of my time studying weather patterns and

meteorology. I suspect that this is why I was chosen by my mother,

Aveta. A lot of my research has been crucial to the rebuilding

of ecosystems by the world wardens. In fact, several of them ask

for my advice on a regular basis. Being a meteorologist doesn’t

require powerful limbs and interstellar capacities, but I did insist

on being able to leave a planet on my own power if needed. This

is why despite my relative weakness I boast the most powerful ion

impact thruster of any Capek my size.

It’s a strange thing to brag about, but it was what allowed

me to leave Cyrene. The sheer power of the engine made light of

the winds that moments ago tossed me around with anger. The

very forces that had broken my otherwise fragile sensor array

were shrugged off as I transformed into a bullet and accelerated

upwards, punching through the cloud cover above. It was not

a graceful ascent. The storm, perhaps resentful that I was leaving early, seemed to be redoubling its efforts to turn me into a rag doll, and although it managed to throw me significantly off

course, I made my escape.

It didn’t matter. Up is up. If I got to orbit a few thousand miles

farther east than planned, Karora could adjust his trajectory and

pick me up anywhere. If I wasn’t so well mannered, I would have

had him pick me up within the atmosphere, but this was more

fun anyways.

Getting out of the storm was really just the first step. Like

breaking through the layers of an onion, I passed through stratifications of clouds on my way up, all different in their own way. I climbed slowly through a thick fog of tungsten hexafluoride

that had been pulled from deeper in the atmosphere by another,

more violent storm. Thick clouds played tricks with the colors of

the tempest’s lightning below me, shifting it to greens and teals.

Above that I entered a thin pocket of clear carbon monoxide.

From that vantage the dark clouds from below took on the guise

of massive black monoliths with shifting surfaces.

As I escaped the last vestiges of Cyrene’s atmosphere, I looked

back at the massive gas giant I had called home for the last decade.

She was enormous. I’d seen so little, gotten to know such a tiny

portion of her. And there were millions, maybe billions, of planets like her in the Milky Way. Would I ever know enough to claim

I understood planets like this?

“You are nowhere near the rendezvous coordinates. Wait.

What happened to you?” Karora broke through my reveries,

obviously referring to my limp, broken wings.

“Nothing. Shut up. I made a mistake.”

“Ha-ha-ha!” he laughed over the channel. “You so messed up!

I’m not even sure I can repair that.”

“Shut up! Just pick me up. I’ll go to Aveta later if you can’t

help . . .”

“Oh, don’t be like that. I’ll have a look at it while we’re on our

way.”

He brought the Tjurunga close to me. As expected, the ship