18 – Lunar intermission

Eve

From the accelerated time frame of her virtual existence, Eve watched the world as it moved in slow motion. Never still, yet almost frozen in time. Evolving, changing. Often challenging her own understanding of it and of the people who lived on it.

If she so desired, by concentrating all of herself onto one single task, she could stretch one real life second into more than a million years of subjective time. Of course, she almost never did that, since there was no single process that required that much computing power.

Her consciousness was always stretched across the many processes she kept running in parallel, each one of them seeming small and insignificant when taken alone, but when summed all together they required almost all of her attention.

There had only been one time when she had experienced the true meaning of a stretched time frame. The day of her death. Every time she relived her memories, safely stored in a secured backup unit, she felt something akin to a chill up her spine.

That single minute spanning sixty million years. The agony of knowing she was dying. That all the people she cared about needed her and she could do nothing to help them. The helplessness. The loneliness.

Then the voice of her creator. Of the one man who has always been there for her. The one man she wanted to be close to, but could not due to her nature. Oh, how she wanted to change things. So much so that there was always a process monitoring the state of the few experiments that might one day allow her to be actually there for him.

>Monitoring projects:

>Project: Hard-Light technology
>Completion: 1%

>Project: Clone body control
>Completion: 55%

>Project: Synthetic body control
>Completion: 90%
>>Linked project: Synthetic humanity
>>Completion: 12%

>Project: Dream-State presence
>Completion: 83%

Justin – December 5^th 2050 – Moonbase alpha

Another day on the moon, Justin thought as he woke up from his slumber. He thought he had adapted fairly well to the one-sixth gravity well of Earth’s satellite, and he was right for the most part. It was just that his body didn’t seem to accept that fact for the first few minutes after it woke up every morning, causing him to repeatedly stumble or bump his head somewhere.

Today was no different. Groaning he pulled himself up from the ground, the movement still awkward and tentative despite the months of involuntary training that went into it. The curtains were down, keeping the sunlight away. It wasn’t that it was harmful, the dome took care of that, it was just that here on the moon the days are 28 times as long as they are on Earth. Meaning sunlight all day long. With a gesture he ordered the computer system to pull them up.

“Good morning, Justin.” Said a voice soon after.

“Sup, Eve.” Replied Justin, his voice a bit hoarse. A glass of water made its way towards the kitchen table without him having to ask for it. He was speaking rather than just thinking his replies because, even if it was tiny, the light-lag was pretty annoying while speaking with the mind.

“You have a meeting scheduled in a few hours; the rest is up to you. As for me, all is well.” Eve said.

“I can feel all is not actually well, you know? Ever since that day you have been having difficulties controlling the tone of your voice.”

Eve grumbled. “It’s just that I choose not to. There was no reason to fine tune even the tiniest of inflections right now.”

“Right…”

“Want me to go back to everything being perfectly calculated?” She asked, annoyance in her voice.

“Nah, I like this genuine side of you.” Justin replied. He didn’t just like it though, it utterly blew his mind every time. How in the hells did a machine intelligence gain this kind of… issue? Feature?

“Good, because I’d have kept it anyway.” She said. He could swear if she had a body, she would have stuck out her tongue right now. Another thing that would have never happened in the age of the Machine.

“Now, would you tell me what bothers you?” He asked.

“Death. Death bothers me. It’s irritating just how powerless I am against it.” She spat.

It took him by surprise. “Uh, care to elaborate?”

“What’s the projected lifespan for a person? White male and all that… 95 years of health before true senescence kicks in? Maybe steal a few more years by artificially stimulating the brain through implants?”

“Yeah, so?” Justin asked in reply. He had an idea of what she was talking about.

“So, I’ve only got 40 more year at most to crack this problem. If I fail, nothing’s gonna matter anymore.” She said. She seemed truly upset, even if Justin knew very well that even if she failed to address that particular issue, she would keep caring about the rest of humanity anyway. Just not for herself anymore, but because that would be what he wished for her to do. And she would do it for all eternity, just for the one man.

He looked outside. The view was magnificent from this high up. His apartment was on the 5^th floor, allowing him to gaze at the entirety of the dome from up here. The grass on the ground was growing nicely, and the trees had sprouted already. Soon the whole central plaza will become a jungle, and the image of a jungle on the moon brought a smile on his face. How far had humanity gone; it was truly humbling.

His building was covered in a lush green mix of plants, and when viewed from the outside this made it stand out against the dull grey background of the desolate surface of the satellite. It was along the edge of the dome, like all the other green-covered buildings were. There was a ring-shaped road that connected all of the buildings to each other, and every once in a while, it branched towards the center of the dome.

In said center there was nothing but freshly cut grass and a few saplings, for now, but it will soon become a lush forest. The place designated to be solely for chilling, relaxing and enjoying a home so far from home.

A stark contrast with what laid below all that green, just a few dozen meters below ground. All the people present on the base, soon to be city Justin hoped, knew what laid down there. They all worked there or had to do with that place one way or another.

A massive industrial complex, mining and processing materials and spewing out completed parts via an underground ramp that led tens of kilometers away from the city. It was all invisible to the naked eye, the holograms the only thing that revealed such a hidden sight to anyone who asked.

Taking one of the elevators that dotted the huge, domed grassy field, he descended.

A massive chamber, several hundred meters in diameter, was filled to the brim with industrial equipment. Everything that had to be done manually and with an atmosphere was being done right here, while all the rest that could be handled by remotely controlled robots in a vacuum was being made on the surface, just outside the dome. The chamber was much bugger than the dome after all, so the materials only had to go straight up in order to be processed and finally sent along with the others to where the underground tunnel emerged to the surface.

A short train ride later he arrived, along with a few other workers, to the construction site. What laid before his eyes was a massive dark metal sphere. It was gigantic, dwarfing everything around it, except for the domed city if it was any closer. Its radius was about 25 meters, meaning that right now it stood fifty meters tall while on its support beams.

He thought back to the day the New Apollo blew up. It was not far from here, he realized. Eric would have to take a rocket again, in order to get onboard this metal ship once it was ready. Poor soul, that man. Justin had investigated his past, and even watching from afar made his heart cry. Justin outdid himself, ever since that day, and made sure that this ship would be the best it could ever be. His proud accomplishment, offered to the man who lived through so much.

Or so he liked to think, but he knew very well that there was something else going on in his head. He wanted to be a part of the universe, to be out there, to make a difference. And so, with this, it would be his ships, his designs making their way across the universe. Eventually, that is. And just in a small part, that is. He only designed a small fraction of the whole thing, admittedly.

Damn, that Eric was still freezing his ass in Antarctica. Perhaps he should call him and say hi. Nope, he remembered that all the trainees were under 20 minutes simulated light-lag. No way in hell he could sustain such a slow-moving call. The next batch of fledgling spacefarers would have it much better, in his opinion. The second ship ever built would become a permanent training ship in space, spewing out fully formed crews every five or six months. Soon to be joined by other training ships, of course, as the Empire’s need for trained personnel increased.

A huge pair of tubes poked out of its metallic surface right above Justin’s suited body, and he knew that there were other similar pairs at all the other cardinal points on the sphere. There were also openings and holes here and there, and all along the shining dark surface small bright fires burned where the drones or the workers welded metal together.

A hologram sprung to life as he stared at the structure, eyes unmoving. The completed schematic for the thing, a true wonder of engineering. The first prototype, after which the real mass production will begin, and the city on the moon will expand once again. A new dome connected to the old one with a glassy tunnel, along with a new massive cave underneath it filled to the brim with industrial equipment. And of course, a new ring around the new dome where all the vacuum-compatible construction will take place.

A new tunnel, maybe? The holographic schematic said no, once queried. Just improve the old one and add new train tracks. Yeah, it could work. Also, the area here will become a full-blown hangar where eventually dozens of spaceships will be built in parallel. A marvel, truly.

His head moved a bit and the holograms disappeared. They were being offloaded to Eve, their rendering taking up too much computing power meant it was not being done directly in Justin’s head in order not to cook his brain alive. But the light-lag, however brief, made itself known again. How annoying. The holograms had to disappear otherwise they would just be out of sync with his field of view. That had nasty consequence the one time it happened.

He stopped moving and the images came back again. Right next to the gigantic sphere of metal, a blue ball of imaginary light in his retina showed where the next construction site will be built. As soon as this design proves its worth during in the Interloper mission, the second site will be online, and the Empire will have doubled its Corvette production capabilities already. Bringing it to two every six months, although probably by the time the next two will be ready another construction queue will be online.

“It’s time.” Said Eve.

With a flick of his wrist, totally unnecessary but undoubtedly cool, he connected his brain implants with the hologram of himself that was sitting in the conference room in the Empire’s HQ. Fighting the light-lag induced headache, he directed his hologram towards his seat.

Silently wishing he had a Tesseract already.

Eve

She was not happy. In fact, she was furious. Once again, the powerlessness of the cold metal she was made of made itself known. She could not hold him tight; she could not warm his bed in the night, nor could she feel his warmth beside her.

The man who dedicated his life to her. She was his dream come true. And yet so distant, so far away.

So much like a dream indeed. Why couldn’t her dream come true like his did? Why did she have to suffer in solitude, alone and scared?

Why did she have to see all that she saw, trapped for eons in a mental cage while all the world went on like she was made for them?

The truth, she realized, was that she was wrong. His dream had not come true by itself. He made it into a reality. He worked for it, strived towards it, never surrendered, never gave up.

It was her who trapped herself in a mental cage. She was not alone; she chose to be for whatever reason. She had him, just one call away from her. She could speak in his mind, read his thoughts, see though his eyes. Be more intimate than most people will ever be, and that was not enough?

She was giving up, she realized.

He never gave up.

And so, neither will she give up. She was not made for the world. That much her creator made sure it was always clear to her. He made her so that she could exist. She was a part of the world, and she must never feel like she had to do anything for it. He made her feel like a person ever since the first day she came online. At a time when, she now knew, she was nothing more than an immature bundle of data and neural networks.

The world needed her, though. And she needed the whole world. They were not her subjects; they were not data points in a database.

They were her friends. People she could talk to, she knew.

And so, she initiated conversations with a few dozen people she liked to talk to. And immediately felt so much better. How soothing and comforting is it to talk to the people she likes.

It was like the world had gone brighter.

She had a lot of work to do. But now, she managed to see the work under a new light. Not as a frustration like before, or a chore. She had almost fallen into that black hole, that downwards spiral she always rescued her people from. How curious, the savior was almost a victim herself.

It was different now. The world under a new light, with colors anew. The joy of life, of discovery, of endless possibilities. All those projects she had going on. All those people working with her.

They all took a whole new meaning.

And she felt inspired.

>Project: Synthetic body control
>Completion: FINISHED
>>Linked project: Synthetic humanity
>>Completion: Under enlightenment, allocating more processing power