Maxwell's Demon Ch. 01-06

The acquire light turned green and metallic clatters rang as the container was wrangled in tow. There was the sound of external docking door motors turning, and then Tad appeared in the gangway.

"Welcome to Iss328."

"Boring," William said.

"I just work here, I don't make ship names. Are these the experiment plates? If these need to be attached externally then let's leave them in cargo until we get near Eureka."

"Fine. This is going to be a two person EVA to attach these in the configurations I've designed. Is that going to be a problem?"

"Doubt it. Anything else?"

"Ya, don't eat all my pizza rolls," Jennifer said.

"Maybe I already did. Let's do introductions and then we'll break orbit."

"This is Wheels and Micks. They'll be piloting Iss328, our loaner ship," said Tad. "I'll be heading back to Scoope 1 with John and Sarah once navigation is programmed. We'll slave to your nav for the outbound burns."

They shook hands. "I Appreciate your help. I want to be honest, this carries some risk. We'll be in close quarters with phenomena we don't understand," Jennifer said.

"We're ISS, that last S is survey, not safety," Wheels said.

"That's the attitude. I'd like to program navigation," said Jennifer, making her way forward to the command module. She leaned over a console next to Micks who just sat down.

"Are you sure about the declination coordinate you gave me?" Micks said as she scrolled through screens.

"Mostly, we have to start the search somewhere," said Jennifer.

"They're close to the plane of some poorly charted rocks in the belt. I want to make sure we don't fudge up the deceleration points. You ever seen a ship smash into an asteroid? It looks like a pre-orbital dump of the waste tanks, just a silvery mist of particles," Micks said, making an effervescent bubbling gesture with her hands.

Micks burst out laughing. "The look on your face. We'll be fine. Buckle up," she said, pointing to an empty jump seat. "It'll be a little while before we bring the fusion drive up."

"Cargo bay door 1 closed and latched?" said Micks.

"Check." replied Wheels.

"Scrubber 1, Scrubber 2, recirc and support ETL please?"

"Green and Green, 59 days."

"LDR Fluid and Mag Field check."

"Liquid droplet radiator 82% at capacity. Mag coils flux test, field is stable."

"Wtf, 82%, really? Sloppy dockside service ... " Micks said with irritation.

"It's within mission tolerance," Wheels replied, "Do you want me to contact Orbital to top off?"

"No, let it be. Laser Guidance Gyros and Starlink?" she continued.

"LGG Nominal. All star reference points acquired and locked."

"Scoope 1, this is Iss328, you are nav slave."

"Acknowledge we are nav slave," John replied over comms.

"Let's break orbit," said Micks.

Jennifer relaxed in weightlessness as 328 glided through space. She watched a starboard observation monitor. The ship made minor pitch and yaw corrections. It had to be a perfectly straight shot once they fired the particle cannon that was their main drive up. This was a more powerful ship than the small survey vessel she and John occasionally crewed.

"LDR coming online. The twins say we're good!" Wheels said.

"Model 1, model 2 verify coordinates for brachistochrone burn," Micks said, then groaned. "Tell me you didn't name them this time?"

Jennifer figured that must be an affectionate reference to the dual thought models onboard the ship. Outside she saw arcs of liquid metal from the LDR, the liquid droplet radiator. She's never seen an LDR in use before. It formed in field lines around the ship. It was like a science book drawing of a magnetic field. That's exactly what it was. It was a heat-radiating system for all the power they were about to generate. Superheated liquid metal was ejected from a nozzle into fine droplets in the front of the ship, guided by a magnetic field around the hull and captured at the rear, where it was drawn into the engine heat sinking system to repeat the cycle.

"On your mark, navigator," Wheels said.

Micks sighed, though the edge of her lips held a small smirk. "What are their names this time?"

"Tigra, and Bunny," Wheels said.

"Why do I bother with you," Micks said. "Light it!"

-*-

The outbound burn was long but uneventful. They'd taken a break to deploy the Whipple shields in the search and discovery patterns they planned to use when looking for the void strand. Jennifer was onboard Scoope 1 for food, and a mission briefing before they started their search. The convection food prep behind Jennifer beeped.

"And, as promised, the finest pizza rolls this side of 21th century," said Tad, grabbing the rehydrated items from the unit and heading toward the table.

"I was sure you were going to screw me over, either by eating them all, or never having them in the first place," said Jennifer.

"They're not bad," said John. "I wouldn't go eating crap like this every day, but as a junk food treat, they're pretty good."

"To Totinos Pizza rolls, the finest junk food ISS lets us have!" said Jennifer.

"I'm not eating this shit," said Sarah.

"Come on now. If your CoreX boss is having some, you can have at least one," Jennifer said.

"Alright, let's talk about what the hell we're doing out here near the belt, seemingly with nothing of interest around," Micks said.

"What we're looking for can't be seen. We can only detect it by what we can't see," Jennifer said.

"We used an artificial intelligence, collating data from every sensor humankind has in the solar system, along with some mysterious machine intuition. We have its best plot of where this mass is. We intend to search for it using laser direction probes from a communication drone, and trying to bounce a beam off the Whipple shields, which we'll use as giant reflectors. When we don't see the beam, we'll assume it's because there's void matter occluding it," Jennifer said.

"You're going to perform a sliding window search with two ships and the comm drone?" Micks said.

"Yes," William said. "We'll start with orthodromes at the -4db range of the drone's laser power and construct a cube from that sphere to make navigation simple. We'll slice the cube from top to bottom and sweep the ships along their corresponding squares."

"I'm assuming one of you did chem fuel Calculations for this?" said Micks.

"I checked their numbers," said John. "I've also uploaded performance reduction parameters. Nothing too drastic but we do need to take into account the mass of the Whipple shields once fully unfolded, particularly with roll rate changes."

"Ok bozos, let's get a rest cycle before we start looking for your invisible needle in a stack of nothing," Micks said.

-*-

"You first," Micks said as Jennifer prepared to return to ISS 328. When the docking tube finished retracting Micks took off her EVA undergarments leaving herself clothed in nothing but a pair of shorts and a tank top; she locked the airlock from the cargo module to the aft module. She activated the comm panel, "Wheels, it Looks like we're having some trouble with the cargo bay airlock door again, I'll let you know when I've got it working, nothing to worry about."

"Oh? again?" Wheels replied, in a monotone voice, and then ended the voice circuit.

Micks pushed off from the wall and glided toward Jennifer, stopping herself directly in front of her with the overhead hand holds.

"It took you 14 minutes and 37 seconds to put on your EVA suit, though you did, at least, do it correctly. I think we should work on that," she said, her hazel eyes staring directly into Jennifer's, not a hint of sarcasm on her face.

Jennifer hung still for a moment, waiting to see if she was serious. When Mick's expression remained unchanged she decided to answer. It was true Jennifer didn't EVA much, but she wasn't accustomed to being challenged this way, and Micks was not a CoreX employee; Jennifer held no sway over her. She wasn't sure where this was going. "I'm sure I'll do better next time."

"Maybe you wasted too much time undressing. Why don't we start there and see how long that takes?"

Again Mick's face was perfectly expressionless, and Jennifer waited for some kind of crack in her demeanor, a smile, a smirk, anything.

"Well? Get Started," Micks said.

Jennifer did nothing.

"15 seconds. As I suspected, this is a part of the problem," she said.

Jennifer started taking her shirt off. She was curious how this confrontation was going to play out. She pulled the light weave fabric over her head leaving her in a t-shirt, then took off her pants until she was in standard polyweave boxers. The pants included the liquid MAG system, essentially a diaper was built in. The unit had been partially used.

"That will have to be taken to recycling, take those off," Micks said, plainly. Jennifer hesitated.

"Coming up on two minutes, definitely a part of the issue," Micks said, taking her own tank top off, revealing a pair of pert C cup breasts that didn't need the aid of weightlessness to appear perfect.

"Do you still want to leave those on?" Micks said, finally cracking a smile, closing her distance to Jennifer. She reached down and gently started pulling Jennifer's t-shirt up.

"I don't want you to get the wrong impression about me," Micks said, biting her lip, "... no, actually I don't care what you think about me."

Micks folded her own shirt in some kind of single fluid motion and pressed it against a wall clip. "You haven't been out to space, long deploy, have you? Women out here, all the time, like me ... we don't have the luxury of waiting. We have to take what we want when it's available."

Jennifer hadn't decided how to handle this spunky ISS captain yet. She wasn't against the idea of kissing a woman, but this was the closest she'd ever come. Jennifer looked lost.

"Hmmm. That's what I thought. Ok. I'll let you go this time, noob," Micks said, sinking her hand underneath the elastic band that was the last remaining piece of clothing Jennifer wore. She snapped it so hard it left a red mark, then pushed Jennifer into the shower stall.

"Clean up, and meet in hab when you're done," she said with an undeniably sexy smile before leaving.

-*-

(location: Earth, 6am )

It took three alarm cycles for Greg to wake up. He clipped his shoulder on the door frame, still half asleep, while making his way to the bathroom. He grabbed the datanode with final updates on his project proposal and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.

"You're a little late, I'd hoped maybe with some of that time off you'd have found time to rest," Dr Anan said.

Greg set the datanode on the desk. "It's there, everything. The proposal, in its entirety."

"All well and good, but there's this small matter that I can't let you in the AI lab."

Greg rubbed his eyes, digging out a piece of sleep embedded in them still. "What?"

The issue at hand, Greg, is we can't have anyone whose security clearance isn't up to date walking in and out of the lab, and I can't update your security clearance until this is resolved," Dr. Anan said, pulling an email up on his datapad and sliding it across the desk to Greg.

"This says I'm being brought up on charges for violation of Lab security, for trespassing on the aqueduct?"

Do you even check your email anymore Greg?

"wait a tick, well ... "Greg pulled out his phone. He hadn't checked his email in a month.

"Close the door, please," Dr Anaan said.

"I don't understand why you, why they, can't just let me in? I've been working here for 15 years," Greg said, reseating himself.

"I don't know what kind of adolescent stunt you felt you needed to pull. If you're going to represent this Lab then you need to hold yourself accountable to some kind of higher standard," Dr. Anaan said, his voice easily heard down the hallway had the door not been closed.

"I've been busy lately, preoccupied."

"Greg," he said, then sighed. "Look, I know you've been beating yourself up about Wendy leaving you, and I know you've been getting some shit work lately.

I spoke to the deputy, we generally have good relations with them. We've been embedded inside their aqueduct right of way for years now, and they've always looked out for us, let the occasional slips go: like that time the lab picnic got out of hand and a few drunk people set the sand on fire with gasoline to find out if the satellite images would see it.

I can't tell if their legal department won the lottery, or if you pissed off someone over there by sleeping with their wife, but they've got the legal dogs all over this, and the usual goodwill they extend the lab for minor infractions isn't sailing this time.

"Heh. The sand fire was a pretty good prank," he said before his mouth turned into a thin line. "This is bullshit. I'm not sleeping with anyone's wife. It's a damn water pipe in the middle of nowhere."

Greg rubbed his forehead and stood up. "You know what ... I'm just going to sit on this, send them a letter from my Lawyer, and see if they really want to pony up over something so idiotic. My ADXP reserve duty zero-g certification is due. I'm taking off to Mars.

Dr. Anan waved the datapad back and forth lazily as if he could clear some kind of miasma.

"Greg, I don't think you realize how serious this is. The port authority is filing an injunction preventing your presence in the lab until this issue with the aqueduct right-of-way trespass is resolved. I talked to the machine governance committee and, unless there's someone actively working on the compute fabric assigned for your ATM, they're going to put it back in the flex-pool.

I know you are thinking: can't we find anyone else to work on it? The answer is no. The project will be suspended as evidenced in the lawsuit the port authority deputy has levied against you. They're making the case that you are a security threat since you've demonstrated the ability to bypass their gating which means all ISS system access is restricted until cleared.

The best I can do for you is convince them to put the fabric in standby power mode -- maybe if we're lucky the quantum states won't decohere. I know you don't want to lose Casey, and neither do I, but no one can guarantee that. Vacuum energy is a strange thing."

Greg put fingers across his forehead, kneading it, then pounded the alloy wall with his fist, "fuck ... fuck ... fuck! Not again."

"Don't put her into the flex pool, not until I get back from my zero-g recert, could you do that for me?"

"I'll delay the machine governance committee until then, Greg, but that will be all I can do. After that, you'll be on your own."

Greg could only hope Jennifer could fund him at this point. It'd been a few months since he'd sent her the latest research result sets from Casey. If they weren't good enough, then this would be game over. The last he'd heard, she was arranging to put that research to the test. Maybe he could catch her in real-time, while she was still on Mars.

-*-

"OnSat Combooth. Welcome Greg," a neutral female voice said.

"Mars real-time communication info," said Greg.

"Lunar relay through OnSat focuslink is not required with current orbital positioning. Real-time communication delay is 4.9 minutes one way."

"Record, private encode, immediate delivery, Jennifer Wenzlat, company: CoreX."

"Contact located. Time division multiplexer packet quota secured, begin your real-time message at the tone."

"Jennifer. Help. I don't know if you'll get this real-time, but I paid the extra money anyway. I'm going to lose power for my AI model. It's the same politics as always, I told you this would happen. Maybe the result sets I've sent you have been useful. I only have a few weeks before it's recycled into the compute flex pool. I can't go through this again, I won't create life just to watch it be murdered over petty compute resource squabbles. You said you could help fund the research. I need to hear from you before I return Earth side from my zero-g recerts. I'm sending my itinerary. It's now or never. I'll wait for a reply if you happen to take this real-time."

Greg ended the message.

"Your message is buffering to Deimos orbital relay. Standby for receipt ticket ...

Message fully buffered. Delivery is now guaranteed by the OnSat system. Your satisfaction is our top mission!

Would you like to wait for a real-time message-read receipt, Greg? Current wait time is approximately 10 minutes," the annoyingly cheerful synthetic voice said.

"Yes."

He put his feet on the desk and listened to the latest independent Martian Metal, a guilty pleasure of his.

Ten minutes went by and there was no reply. "Well, I guess that's that," he mumbled to himself.

"Close channel," he said to the Onsat system.

-*-

A maniacal voice screaming "I'm on a Highway To Hell!" rattled the room from a speaker above her sleeping pod, it ended Jennifer's sleep abruptly. She smashed her head on ISS 328's bulkhead as she sprang awake.

"Wakey Wakey!" Wheels said Jennifer's sleeping pod.

"What the fuck! What happened to the 440Hz chime note with a pleasant fade in and out?" William groggily asked.

"Aww come on sailors, it's an old tradition way back from the NASA days. Ground control sent up a song to wake the astronauts," Wheels said.

Wheels pressed a button on a console and the music stopped. "You two are so stuffy."

Pastes and cubes were on the menu for breakfast, and when they'd finished they buckled into the command module. "You up over there Scoope 1," Jennifer said.

"Yes, and already bored. Let's get this started," John said.

328 and Scoope 1's noses both pointed in the same direction, but Scoope 1 had rolled on its belly, inverted to Iss328, allowing them to mount the Whipple shields on the left of both ships. They were going to spread apart now, each traversing their own path along a square, a slice of a cube, while a communications drone bounced lasers off their Whipple shields acting as reflectors.

Pneumatic channels filled along the shields, unfolding them to their full surface area. Jennifer watched observation monitors from the primary survey station.

Starlink was the master navigation system on all ISS ships. It locked onto known stars using them as celestial navigation points. It wasn't a difficult modification for it to see this artificially generated spot of light on the Whipple shields and track it as well. This was how they were going to keep track of that tiny spot of laser light reflected from each ship's Whipple shield. Starlink thought it was just another star it should keep track of, a strange star, with very odd modulation patterns, but a star nonetheless in its mind.

"Starting pass one, plane one," John said over comms.

A burst of chemical thrust initiated each ships pattern. The ships altered their yaw as they moved to keep the reflection surfaces parallel. Minutes turned to hours with Jennifer's patience dissolving. "I haven't even seen the slightest wavering in photons. Run a diagnostic again," she said.

"It's not going to change anything, we just ran one an hour ago," said Wheels.

"You have to trust Starlink. It's not going to miss this. The computers can run this pattern. We won't miss it," Micks said.

"Micks is right," Wheels said, "Why don't you and William take a break, catch a few Zs in Aft. I'll wake you at the first signal change. We'll keep the ship running smoothly.

"I suppose you're right. It looks like we aren't going to get lucky right out of the gate," Jennifer said, unbuckling to head aft.

The ships continued gliding along, the only disruption the turning maneuvers when they reached the corners of a search slice.

"Pass one, Plane 31 starting," Wheels said, leaning back in his chair.

In the crew module, Jennifer zipped into her pod hoping she could catch ten minutes of sleep. When she was young, she'd memorized the orbital period and distance of every planet from the Sun and dreamed of the day when humankind might explore, with manned missions, the outer solar system. The distances in space seem so cruel. How could we see so much of the universe and forever be trapped in a tiny bubble of space and time, like a zoo animal in a cage? There was an old poem: Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? It seemed the heavens were to be forever out of grasp. She dozed off.