Accidental Gods (10 page)

“We need a giant planet, like our Jupiter, to provide some cover for this hypothetical Alpha planet—to suck up asteroids and comets and such as they bombard the stellar system. But the giant planet can’t be too hot or have a weird orbit, or it might take out our planet, too. The Alpha star also needs to be just right. Too much UV, and life is doomed. Growing or collapsing is bad, too. The planet itself will benefit from a moon because that stabilizes its tilt and tidal systems. Its tilt needs to be right, to make sure the seasons are not too extreme. The planet needs the right mass and elemental makeup. Carbon is critical for life, but too much can lead to a runaway greenhouse effect. All of that will likely lead to lots of liquid water—oceans—the final ingredient.”

“In short,” he concluded, “everything needs to be just right. Perfect, even.”

He paused. “OK, I can see some of you out there cringing.” He smiled. “Here is the good news: the list can be reasonably well defined.”

“And tracked,” Stephen jumped in. “We’ve been working on a program that can identify planetary systems, look at the makeup and activity of the star, the planetary configurations, and much more. It’s not quite done, but it’s very close. We have now taken Don’s laundry list of stellar and planetary requirements for a habitable planet and created a search algorithm. It won’t be very fast, but it should work.”

Thomas asked, “Why won’t it be fast?”

“Because it effectively has to render the universe as it goes so that the program can look at it.”

“Oh.”

“While it’s running, we won’t be able to render anything. Also, it will slow universe processing…dramatically.”

Thomas frowned.

“So, we don’t know how long it will take to find targets. But we can’t scan the whole universe because of the rendering requirements, so we will focus on a short list of target galaxies.”

“Which we’ve already identified manually, by the way,” Don added. “We were able to pick target galaxies visually and mark target regions for scanning.”

“Even so,” Stephen continued as he ran his hands across his rapidly thinning hair, “we will be limited. Don’t expect a giant list of target planets. If we find even one in a reasonable period of time, I’ll be ecstatic.”

The whole group, bar Catherine, nodded. Everyone stood up, ready to get back to work.

Stephen added, “Oh, also—if we find what we’re looking for, I’d recommend stopping at the first one. We won’t need more than one.”

Chapter 14

Year 6

That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

—Neil Armstrong (what he was supposed to say)

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

—Neil Armstrong (what was actually recorded)

SU Time: +7,500,000,000 Years

This galaxy glowed a vivid blue-green, a disk with fiery hydrogen clouds exploding outward from its core. The gaseous plumes reminded Thomas of a volcanic explosion. The light from billions of stars mingled with mixing and accreting masses of gas and dust—other stars about to be born. Vast fields of more loosely clumped clouds intermixed light and shadow. Beyond the edges of this island-like galaxy, in all directions around and above, minuscule clusters of light revealed other galaxies dotting the canvas of the universe. It rivaled the most dazzling Hubble pictures Thomas had ever seen. He stood in awe, taking in the fabulous panorama.

He wanted to explore each and every galaxy directly, but there was only so much time and processing power. And this galaxy was the home to the planetary system that their search had matched with the desired attributes most likely to eventually produce life. So here they were, about to check out the planet.

With a sweep of his right hand, Thomas conjured a small image simulating a heads-up display.

“Jenn,” he said, “show me the results of the analysis of most likely locations for stars with planetary systems that could support life.”

“Yes, sir. You’ll see the most likely candidate in just a sec—though, we don’t think the planetary system has fully developed yet.”

Jenn’s voice had come over the environmental audio, but she was nowhere to be seen. Although all the new rendering rooms had their own computer systems with LCDs set up to allow local control, there were central controls for them as well. In this case, Thomas had wanted to check out this planet alone, so Jenn was in the control room with everyone else. They could watch his view on a single screen in central command, but that room didn’t have the full immersion of the rendering rooms. Thomas was sure that they were irritated that they weren’t in the rendering room with him, but he had wanted to be the first to “set foot” on this new planet. He wasn’t sure why, and he usually didn’t let his ego run wild, but for whatever reason, he wanted to do it this way. So he had.

Lisa had said, “Typical,” and that bothered him, but it had also made him more adamant.

A set of numbers materialized, glowing a somber amber on the heads-up:

9234,47815,29899

With another subtle gesture, Thomas activated the guide displays. Small glowing numbers showed next to arrows at the corners of his vision. Two slightly larger sets of numbers appeared in front of him:

5012,9402,10932

11092,32015

Thomas turned right and down, and the second set of numbers swung so that they always stayed in his view. The digits spun to reflect the numeric value of his focal point. Thomas slowed his movement, watching the numbers, and stopped when they read:

9234,47815

Of course, he couldn’t yet see the planetary system he had turned toward. From this distance, neither star would be even a tiny pinprick of light at the edge of the galaxy in front of him.

With a slight flick of his fingers, he shot forward. This time, the top three numbers rolled, slowly at first and then faster as his speed increased. The stars streaked past him as he swept into the upper fringes of the galaxy’s enormous disk.

Thomas heard Stephen’s voice over the environmental audio: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Thomas smirked and said, “Han Solo, huh, Stephen?”

“Sorry, Thomas. It came out louder than I’d expected.”

“That’s OK,” Thomas said and then inwardly agreed that the streaking stars
did
remind him of the
Millennium
Falcon
jumping to hyperspace, and it appealed to the geek romantic in him.

Thomas could have teleported to the star system, but this was more fun. Besides, he enjoyed getting a feel for the universe. It wasn’t an intimate feel, but it was far better than teleportation would have allowed. It was like taking the bullet train from London to Paris: not as fast as flying, but you actually passed through the French countryside, even if at incredible speeds. If a person had the time to walk the countryside or even swim across the channel…

Jenn was right. This system wasn’t fully developed, but something was definitely here.

“Hey, Jenn,” Thomas asked, “is this the Alpha star?”

“Yes, sir,” her disembodied voice said. “It’s the second planet.”

As he glided toward the planet, he couldn’t help but feel this was a big event.

The planet swelled beneath him and then filled the entire bottom half of his field of vision. The approaching surface below was a vast sea of lava with just-birthed rocky outcroppings at the peaks of congealing, cooling islands of molten rock. He couldn’t feel the searing heat, of course, but he could certainly smell the sulfur. It made his throat clench up even though he still breathed the filtered, cool air of the simulation room. In some sense, he even tasted it. It created a bitterness on his tongue, anyway. The new smell technology was definitely working, for better or worse.

He swooped into the upper edges of the planet’s atmosphere, though the sulfurous tendrils didn’t swirl any differently as a result of his flight through them. As far as this budding universe was concerned, Thomas didn’t exist.

Thomas hovered one foot over the boundary between the room’s central floor panel and the rendered part of the floor, where one of the rocky outcroppings approached. Though he had been born after Neil Armstrong had taken that legendary first step on the moon, Thomas thought of Armstrong’s famous words.

He pressed his sole onto what seemed solid rock, though he felt nothing, and his touch made no sound and disturbed nothing.

“One small step into a new world,” Thomas said, and he mused over Armstrong’s lost “a.” NASA argued it somehow drifted free of the sentence before reaching Earth, although it seemed likely that Armstrong had in actuality botched the line and said, “One small step for man”—a dramatic change in meaning.

The smell of sulfur strengthened. Occasional geysers of lava spouted fifty or more feet into the air. Swirling lava twisted and turned around Thomas’s tiny island and the other solid rocky formations he could see. The planet was in its earliest stages with the crust just beginning to form. What gases the lava gave off dissipated quickly into the vacuum above. Only a hint of its future atmosphere existed and even then, only immediately above the planet’s surface.

It wasn’t visible in the lava, but Thomas knew that as the planet rotated, nickel and iron were being drawn into its center, creating its core. It would be another five hundred thousand years before the crust had fully cooled and solidified.

Thomas couldn’t resist just standing there, looking at the lava. It was almost alive with roils and bursts. As a child, he had fixated on the Discovery Channel whenever there had been a show about volcanoes. The vivid reds and oranges, the power and heat, it had all fascinated him. Now, as he stood on a small island in a sea of lava, he found it breathtaking. Knowing he had created it made the feelings that much more powerful.

He also couldn’t help but see a landscape most closely associated, at the subconscious level, with hell. While he was no longer a believer, the fact that he had been raised Christian instilled certain images deep within his psyche. This was one of them. If this was hell, it was certainly beautiful. Though, he had to admit, living here would be uncomfortable. He chuckled to himself. All he needed was a pitchfork, and he could be the devil, lording over his fiery domain.

As he watched, a large comet appeared on the horizon, its trajectory putting it on a theoretical collision course with him. He stood, watching. This was just what Don had said would happen—a bombardment of comets and asteroids from the system would beat on the planetary husk for a few hundred thousand years. They would make the planet stronger and more diverse. This was the accretion phase, when the planet picked up mass, more heavy elements, and even water, as all these other cosmic bodies smashed into it.

The comet rushed toward Thomas. He could hear the roar now. Though Jenn had kept the volume partially buffered—after that last sound incident—the roar was still thunderous. The floor shook from all the bass. Then Thomas saw that the comet wasn’t heading directly toward him but instead was headed for the sea of lava in front of him.

The comet smashed into the molten sea with a flash like the light from a thousand suns all striking one tiny mirror at the same time. A rolling wave of lava and ashes shot up and out. A mushroom cloud, probably of steam and other instantly vaporized material from inside the comet, rose billowing into the sky. The impact’s fiery blast wave rushed toward Thomas, slinging lava and sulfurous clouds out of its way. It seemed to accelerate as it drew near, and Thomas couldn’t help but duck and clench his eyes shut. The sound blasted and then sputtered from Jenn’s buffering, and then the roar steadily fell, like after a thunderclap. The smell of sulfur intensified. He could even smell it in his sleeve. He’d need to do a wash after this and take a shower.

When Thomas opened his eyes, it was to darkness. His view of the Alpha star was blocked by dense smoky clouds. The lava, at least in his immediate area, was gone. All that remained was a giant crater, along with a downpour of pebbles and rocks—also, to Thomas’s amazement, the very beginnings of real rain—liquid water.

Chapter 15

Year 6

We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught. He can be killed and forgotten. But four hundred years later an idea can still change the world. I’ve witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. I’ve seen people kill in the name of them; and die defending them. But you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it or hold it. Ideas do not bleed. It cannot feel pain, and it does not love.

—Evey Hammond,
V for Vendetta

It was a quiet Friday afternoon, and Thomas and Don were sitting in two of the four chairs around a small table in one corner of Thomas’s massive office, each nursing a Pacifico—the beer of choice at IACP. The office was on the fourth floor of IACP’s new building in Austin’s luscious hill country. On the horizon, where the hills dipped, the natural serenity of their new location was a sharp contrast to the distant image of downtown Austin’s skyline.

Thomas asked, “So, Don, you think the Alpha planet won’t work?”

“I thought it might at first, but the orbit is a little too close. In about a billion years, the planet’s orbit will pull it just short of the AHZ, and then the planet will overheat because it is too close to its star.”

“Damn it.” Thomas sighed.

Stephen walked in and asked, “Damn what?” He plopped into another of the chairs around the table and took a sip of his Amstel Light. He set the beer on the table with a
ka-chunk
.

Don said, “I was just telling Thomas that because of some dynamics of the Alpha star, that the Alpha planet’s orbit will eventually bring it too close to its sun. In a billion years or so, it will develop a massive greenhouse effect, boiling the oceans and such.”

“Sounds pleasant.”

“Yeah, so next time we do a search, we’re going to narrow our band even more to better compensate for very long term developments of the star.”

“But other than the Alpha planet’s slightly faulty orbit?” Stephen asked.

“The planet’s perfect,” Don said. “It’s the right tilt, and elemental makeup is good. A nickel-iron core has developed. The fifth planet is a perfect giant, very similar to Jupiter in many ways. The star is stable and the right age. It’s missing a moon, but hopefully that will come in time as the system develops. I don’t think we could do much better—except for this orbital problem.”

“What do you think we should do?” Thomas asked.

Don answered without hesitation, “Start a new search as soon as possible.”

“Wait,” Stephen said. “What if we could just fix it?”

“What?” Don asked, confounded by the nature of the question.

“What if we could alter the planet’s orbit?” Stephen fixated on the empty air between them all, concentrating.

“Well, that would fix the problem,” Don said.

Thomas watched Stephen and waited.

Stephen blinked twice and looked at them again. “Well, this is just a big computer program. We could just move the planet.”

Thomas sipped his Pacifico, leaned back in his chair, and frowned even though he very much wanted to smile. “That would alter the experiment.”

Stephen said, “Not by much.”

“Who would trust our data on anything, if they found out we were screwing around with the results, even minimally?”

“Fork it,” Stephen said.

“Agreed,” Don said. “Fuck it.”

Thomas laughed. “Not fuck it. Fork it. Are you deaf?” Then he nodded at Stephen. “That definitely removes the issue.”

“Right,” Stephen said. Then he said to Don, “You weren’t here for the auditorium lecture.” He turned back to Thomas. “We copy it and alter the copy, not the original. Then we have two independent time lines—effectively creating parallel universes.”

Thomas kept nodding and was unable to conceal a grin.