The Authorized Ender Companion (60 page)

ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY

Studies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries had already shown the critical need to maintain near-Earth gravity onboard spaceships for the long-term health of their occupants. Trips to Mars in the first quarter of the twenty-first century relied on large, rotating habitation wheels to provide 85 percent Earth-normal gravity for the duration of the voyage. Around that same time, the first electro-synthetic planar gravity generators were being developed. Early efforts with Bose-Einstein condensates, running at subfractional 0K temperatures, proved successful, but highly impractical. The ability to fabricate nanotechnology-engineered superconducting materials eventually led to the creation of Bose-Einstein resins, and resulted in reliable, moderate-power, room-temperature planar gravity generators. Furthermore, the discovery of similar Formic technology on ships captured during the First Invasion allowed important increases in efficiency and control of the generated fields, including the addition of three-dimensional volumetric (or “shaping”) control.

Reliability issues and the need to provide single-point-failure-proof artificial gravitational systems led to the choice of building dual-mode systems into all starships and similar long-term space assets, such as the Battle School. These dual-mode systems rely on both large, rotating habitation wheels to create gravity through centripetal acceleration, and electro-synthetic planar gravity generators. The failure of one system does not cascade into the failure of the secondary system, providing a safe haven for the crew until the failed system can be repaired.

Normal production electro-synthetic artificial planar gravity generators have a short effective range and only effective over 5 to 10 meters (at which point they exhibit a rapid falloff). The specialized focusing generators used by the “Hooks” within the Battle Rooms have an effective range of 45 meters.

MOLECULAR DETACHMENT DEVICE/MOLECULAR DISRUPTION DEVICE

As mentioned previously, the Cleaver/Obousy (C/O) spheres are self-sustaining, to a degree, in the relative vacuum of deep space. The subatomic dissociation of trace amounts of interstellar gasses, dust, molecules, and atoms, along with sparse amounts of dark matter, allow the creation and storage of potential energy in higher-dimensional waves along the surface of the sphere.

In a denser environment, however, the amount of energy created and stored
by the C/O spheres is immense. In the presence of dense solids, such as another spaceship or a planetary body, the energy created cannot be long contained. The C/O sphere may rapidly grow in size in an attempt to provide the necessary surface area to store the energy. The sphere acts in a manner similar to electron orbitals surrounding a hydrogen atom. Intentionally imposing certain harmonic frequencies in the field energy can cause the C/O spheres to jump to higher and higher macro-orbital energies at an increasingly rapid rate. The growth in the size of the macro-orbitals increases the rate of energy creation, and the system heterodynes (exhibits runaway feedback) to the point where it becomes unstable. Cleaver/Obousy spheres, when manipulated into instability in the manner described, will expand until the material density surrounding them exhibits a sudden dropoff, at which point they continue to destroy the subatomic bonds of the denser material and eventually collapse onto themselves and dissipate.

As one might expect, a controlled force field with the ability to disrupt every molecule and to disassociate every atom that touches it makes a nearly irresistible weapon. None of the Formic ships was found to contain the modifications that Earth’s scientists and engineers made to weaponize the Alcubierre drive system. It has therefore been assumed that this weapon was not in the Formic arsenal.

The weapon that was developed from modifications to the Alcubierre drive was initially named after the molecular disruption effect of its operation, and was called—quite simply—the “Molecular Detachment Device” or “Molecular Disruption Device.” This name was changed, with colloquial use, to “MD Device,” subsequently “Dr. Device” (MD equaling “Medical Doctor” in the English language), and eventually the “Little Doctor.” This device was of course used, as history recounts, by the fleets controlled by Andrew (Ender) Wiggin in the final battle of the Third Invasion against the Formic home world. The chain reaction set up in the planetary material by the Cleaver/Obousy sphere caused the complete destruction of that planet.

Early designs of the MDD required that the field generator equipment be relatively near the center of the Cleaver/Obousy sphere, leading to the need to place the devices in physical projectiles or missiles. Later designs were able to form and project the sphere away from the central generator, actually separating it from the generator completely. This allowed the weapon to be used remotely, more akin to a high-powered beam weapon such as a laser or proton beam device. An additional advantage of projecting the C/O sphere is that due to its self-sustaining nature and its origins as an interstellar-drive, once created it accelerates forward toward its target at a high rate. Upon
striking its target, the field generators adjust the frequency supporting the C/O sphere, in order to halt the acceleration and lock the sphere to its target.

If not carefully controlled in this manner, a weaponized C/O sphere may still behave as if it is a star-drive and accelerate away from its target without warning, and with an unpredictable acceleration vector. While this error typically still results in the destruction of the intended target, the collateral damage created by such an uncontrolled runaway is often equally devastating.

ECSTATIC SHIELDS

Modifications to the strength and field orientation of the Cleaver/Obousy sphere (its ability to shift the disassociated particles on its surface rapidly to a “trailing edge”) allow it to be used as a protective shield, without the creation of movement for itself and the ship that contains its generator and—more importantly—without the runaway energy conversion, storage, and feedback that makes it an aggressively destructive offensive weapon. This defensive application is typically referred to as an “Ecstatic Shield,” which is believed to be a colloquial derivative of the etymologically more correct “Static Shield.” Paralleling the development life cycle of the Molecular Detachment Device, the Ecstatic Shields were originally generated in a purely symmetrical sphere about a central generator. Eventual improvements in technology allowed them to be projected asymmetrically from their generators. Current state of the art still requires the generators to be within the Ecstatic field, though they are no longer required to be at the geometric center of the sphere. Some experiments have been able to project the field away from the generator, but critical issues regarding field stability cause the fields to collapse rapidly.

BATTLE ROOMS

After the first invasion of Earth by the Formics, and before the establishment of the International Fleet, the political and military minds of the Earth’s leading nations realized that they needed a way to train a new type of military mind. They realized that all of their Earth-centric training regimens were, in one way or another, simply two-dimensional strategic games. Even aircraft and submarine battles at most extended into “2-1/2” dimensional strategies. There would be a primarily flat playing field, with the slight addition of limited vertical motion. They realized that in deep space battles—even in battles surrounding planetary systems—a new way of thinking and fighting would be required. A true three-dimensional approach was required.

This need led to the development of the Battle Rooms—large, zero-gravity environments that were free of the up/down “vertical” orientations imposed by operations on or near the surface of the Earth. The first Battle Rooms were freestanding buildings built on the surface of the Earth. They relied on the use of the recently improved planar gravity generators to locally nullify Earth’s constant gravity. Due to what was considered the entrenched 2D mind-set of the current military at the time, the decision was made to train students who were of pre-secondary-school age.

These first Battle Rooms were built as fully functioning prototypes. They allowed a trial-and-error approach to the development of three-dimensional strategies for use in large-scale planetary and deep-space military operations, as well as the design and implementation of the practical aspects necessary to achieve those training goals.

The initial designs of the Battle Rooms modeled the wall dimensions at 100 meters (m) to a side (roughly 330 feet). Due to Earth-bound construction limitations at the time, these early Battle Rooms were instead built with their interior walls at 75m on a side (just under 250 feet). After extensive use, it was determined that 75m cubes provided more than sufficient room for the proper training of the young strategists. The larger design had almost twice the airflow requirement and would have required huge structural trusses to support the longer spans of the walls. Once the 75m walls “proved themselves” (in essence, were “battle tested”), the design settled in.

The “Stars” were first developed with these land-based systems. The early models were approximately 1/4m to 1m per side, and were built in various geometric shapes such as spheres, tetrahedra, etc. As the realization that the best way to utilize the Battle Rooms grew from hand-to-hand training to the larger planetary and deep-space theaters, the Stars changed from their original, “personal” sized units to the large, gravity-suspended, padded cubes currently used. The majority of the Stars are approximately 3m on a side, and all possess recessed handholds on all six of their faces. These handholds allow soldiers to hold on to, push off from, and reorient themselves as they pass by or lock on to a Star.

The Stars are held in position by local volumetric modifications to the electronically generated gravity fields. Because the positions of the Stars are maintained by these pseudogravitational forces (as opposed to rigid structural connections), the force of a student/soldier landing on or bouncing off a Star—if unopposed—could cause it to change position within the Battle Room. Radio-linked position sensors within the Stars report their positions back to the room control computers fifty times/second, and the projected
gravity field adjusts itself though servo-control electronics to maintain each Star’s position and orientation to within a highly accurate 5 millimeters (<0.1°). The Star’s large mass (nominally 500 to 1,000 kilograms) allows sufficient resistive forces to be generated by the electro-synthetic gravity to keep the Stars in position against the impact loads of multiple students.

Stars are stored within the walls of the Battle Rooms. Large padded panels unlock and swing into the Battle Room to provide access to sizeable storage regions behind.

The “Hook” was developed as a means of modifying the generated gravity fields to allow for safe, controlled movement of the players within the volume of the Battle Rooms. Typically, a Hook is provided to the captain of each army during a skirmish, and “enabled” only at the close of the battle. It permits the captains to retrieve soldiers from free-floating positions at the center of the volume, and direct them with a controlled force vector toward a nearby wall, gate, or handhold.

The Hook does not manipulate the generated gravity fields directly. It sends commands to the room control computer, which controls the generator/focus system, which in turn relaxes or increases volumetric gravity gradients. This modification of the gravity gradients causes tightly controlled force vectors to accelerate the target masses in the desired directions. A laser-targeting system built into the Hook allows the user to “paint” his target, and the control computer for the room’s gravity generator system calculates the location in space of the targeted origin and destination points, and directs the field modifications to those volumetric regions. Programmed buttons on the Hook’s control screen permit large-scale behaviors to be easily triggered (such as moving all players to an adjacent wall, all players to adjacent gates, etc.).

The Hook also controls the thawing of the flash suits in a similar manner. It broadcasts a request to the room control computer, which in turn drops the active broadcast of the suit immobilization signals. This is detailed further in the flash suit section.

The Stars are also moved through the use of focused gravity gradients, controlled by the Hooks or similar administrator-level tools.

The material of the interior walls of the Battle Rooms also advanced from hard plastic and metal in the original designs to softer padding. As the technology became available, interior lighting progressed from harsh, recessed, intermittently placed strip lighting to a flexible, self-luminescent skin over the entire inner padded surface of the Battle Rooms.

The reliance on planar gravity generation for the prototypical Earth-based
Battle Rooms also permitted early experimentation with the orientation of the entry corridors to the Rooms. After a few weeks of experimentation, however, this variation was rejected and the entry corridors were left with a uniform “up” direction, aligned with Earth’s natural gravity vector. The logistics of handling the variations in corridor orientation turned out to be highly complicated, and the small benefits of obscuring the Earth’s gravity “bias” was deemed to be unnecessary. This “up” bias in the access hallways to the Battle Rooms is still represented in the final designs of the Battle School.

The locations of the Gates, the Student’s Gates, and the Teacher’s Gate were also established during this initial design phase. The Gates, the entry points for the competing armies during strategy training sessions (games), are located at the center of the faces of opposing walls. The Student’s Gates, critical for the students’ initial introduction to the Battle Rooms and used for early training exercises, are located at the “bottom” edge of those walls (the same walls as the Battle Gates). The Teacher’s Gate is located at the center of the “south” face of the Battle Room to provide an isolated entrance point for the officers in charge of training. It is unclear why no additional Battle Gates were placed in the east and west walls; it is thought that perhaps the typical two-team elimination approach common to many sports and military training methods at the time prejudiced the original designers toward this implementation.