The Orb – Episode 2

To read Episode 2 click here

Red lights came on instantly—inside the shuttle, outside in the city-ship, and on Crystal’s tablet as it glowed with an alert message. Looking out of the window, Crystal noticed that the shuttle had never stopped moving; she could see the ground of the 500-foot-wide Park Ring speeding by. Then she looked up, taking in the full expanse of the circular ship. At nearly a mile in diameter, and just 400-feet tall, Argos looked like the hollowed out inside of a colossal coin. 

The shuttle seemed unaware of the emergency as it continued its endlessly repeating, 15-minute and 33-second circuit, despite the entire city being bathed in an unnatural red glow. Having just left Crystal’s home, in neighborhood “H” of the Apartment Ring (the outermost ring of Argos), the shuttle continued its path towards the lone shuttle platform in neighborhood “B” of the third ring— the Business and Education Ring, also called the “B and E Ring”. In between these two rings was the Park Ring, where Crystal could see the people—all of them leaving this ring for safety zones—grow steadily larger as the shuttle descended from the 30th apartment level to the 100-foot-high platform—all the while keeping the shuttle cabin floor level with the ground. 

Crystal’s ultimate destination had been the Livestock Ring (Argos’ fourth and final ring), but now she would have to find a safety zone in the B and E Ring when the shuttle stopped. She also wondered if her shuttle would even continue to the City Center in the middle of the ship. Suddenly, a troubling thought occurred to her, “We’ve barely started our 40-lightyear trip, and already the ship’s having problems.” 

Crystal then decided to focus on her immediate situation. She was sitting next to the window side of the shuttle car, and then looked across the 12-foot-wide cabin to the opposite wall. On it was displayed their route and arrival times. They would reach the next platform in four seconds, but the rest of the schedule showed, “Not in service.” Most of the other passengers seemed just as disconcerted as Crystal. Some were even standing, and waiting at the double doors, which were in the center of the display wall.

The 8-car shuttle stopped on the platform normally — smoothly, and without any sense of motion. When the doors opened — moving holographically simulated (or holosim) arrows directing the passengers to three different safety zones. Crystal hesitated, then took the left path which led her, and about 30 other people, to the safety zone in neighborhood “A” of this ring. Although this huge room—which took the entire fifth floor—could hold up to 300 people, only about 150 were there. Most of the people were huddled in small groups or sitting in the rows of chairs. Crystal slowly made her way into the room as the other passengers filed past her. Then she stopped and stared into the red lit room, feeling uneasy. A hand grabbed her shoulder from behind, and she inhaled sharply as she spun around. 

In front of Crystal stood a man in his late teens. He had olive-brown skin and short, wavy black hair that looked uncombed. He was 5′ 7″ tall with an average, but toned build. His features reminded Crystal of a classical Greek figure, but with a hint of the exotic.

“Justin!” Crystal gasped. Then smiled with relief, and slapped him on the shoulder for surprising her.

“I’m sorry if I scared you.” His green eyes now relaxing slightly. “I’m just glad to see someone I know.” 

Although they had met only18 days ago (two days after Argos left Earth), they were quickly becoming friends. They were both outgoing and social, and both had a passion for marine science. Crystal was studying to become an environmental marine scientist, and Justin had his heart set on becoming a marine ecologist. Not only had they become lab partners when they first met for as class at the saltwater tanks, but they made a point to get to know each other better when they had a class at the marsh tanks. Today was to be their third class together, this time at the freshwater tanks.

Crystal stepped forward and gave Justin a hug. Justin returned the embrace and let go a second before Crystal. Crystal felt a slight flush in her face, so she took a step back and asked Justin a serious question. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?” 

“A shuttle dropped me off in neighborhood ‘L’ about a minute before the alert. I had just made it to the Livestock Ring when I heard it. I think this is pretty serious.” Justin motioned for them to sit down, and they navigated around two groups of people before finding seats next to a wall. “But I don’t have a clue what’s happening.” 

Disappointed that Justin didn’t know either, she sat down and turned to a lighter subject. “I’m having my birthday party on October 2nd,” she said as she unconsciously pushed a few strands of hair behind her left ear, “I’d like you to come.” She now looked directly at him, challenging him with her eyes to say, “No.”

“Yeah, sure.” Justin relaxed a little in his seat. “Are you going to have it in a community center?” Then he added teasingly, “with cake and balloons?” 

Crystal ignored his last comment and said, “I don’t know yet. It’s going to be my brother, mom, and dad, one or two of dad’s friends, you, and a few other friends from school.” Then, with mock condescension, she added, “I’ll even make sure the cake has a holosim clown on it so you’ll feel at home.”

“You’re all heart,” he said as he rolled his eyes and smiled. “What—” Justin looked around as the red lights quickly dimmed, then brightened, and the repeating alert stopped mid sentence. 

A second later, the calm female voice started again. “For your safety, all safety-zone doors will close in two minutes. 30 seconds afterwards, all computer function on Argos will be suspended. This includes tablets, wall panels, shuttles, and SANDI. The computers are expected to be nonoperational for five minutes. Thank you for your patience.” 

Crystal looked down at her tablet and saw that it was blank, except for two countdowns.

1:58 to Door Closure 

2:28 to Computer Shutdown 

Crystal showed the tablet to Justin, who gave a barely audible, shocked whistle. “What happens if there’s an emergency while the computers are down?” she asked under her breath. 

“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.” Justin then took the tablet from Crystal and stared at it. “Did you notice anything wrong with any of the computers this morning?” he asked Crystal. Then he looked up at her intently. 

“No,” Crystal said hesitantly. 

“Notice (italics) anything (italics ended) out of the ordinary? Even something you might have ignored at the time?” 

“Well… I woke up at 0725. That was normal. I started getting ready. You know… shower, dressing.” Crystal paused again to think. “Oh, I asked SANDI to play Mozart’s first violin concerto while I got ready. But she played Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ instead. I was glad she did, because it turned out it went better with my mood. I just assumed she was getting better at reading moods.” 

“Could be,” Justin commented, “the ‘A’ in SANDI does stand for ‘Adaptive’. Go on…” 

Crystal was now even more focused. “I went to the common room for the first meal, and it was already prepared. Nothing unusual there. Them I ate while studying my notes for this morning. That was fine… I talked to my mom… my brother and dad came in… SANDI told me my shuttle was coming.”

“Did SANDI give you the right time? I mean, did the shuttle arrive when she said it would?” 

Crystal closed her eyes—concentrating. “I guess… I didn’t time it. But let’s see. What were her exact words? …She said, ‘Crystal’s transport will arrive in 90 seconds at shuttle platform E1. Wait a minute!” Her eyes snapped open, and she turned to face Justin. 

“I caught that too. Are you sure SANDI said ‘E1’?” 

“Yeah… I think so. No… I’m sure.” 

“But you live in neighborhood ‘H, right? Not E’.” 

“Not only that, but I live on the 30th level. I guess I just assumed she said H30, because I always use the shuttle platform closest to my apartment.” Crystal’s excited nervousness was growing with Justin’s. 

“If I remember right, there isn’t even a shuttle platform E1.” Justin’s mind was starting to grasp the implications. “There are twelve neighborhoods, right? ‘A’ through ‘L’, in all four rings. So, the ‘E’ is possible. But the ‘1’ isn’t since the shuttles don’t even go below level four or five. Do you know what this means?” 

“Yeah.” Crystal looked worried for the first time. “It means there’s a serious problem with SANDI. So serious, that they have to shut down all the computers.” They both looked around half expecting everyone else to have discovered what they now knew. But no one else seemed to be aware of how serious the situation really was. 

*****

One hour earlier, in the control room in the City Center, navigator Thomas Stanton was running a system diagnostic for the third time. “This can’t be right,” he said incredulously. 

“What can’t be right?” came an unconcerned voice from behind his left shoulder. 

Stanton pointed to his screen, “There are three systems with software corruption.” Commander Holmes bent in to look at the screen. At five-foot-three, he didn’t have to bend far. “I started by running my normal navigation check,” Stanton continued, “and found that we are off course.” 

“By how much?” Holmes asked, now paying close attention. ~

“It looks like we’ve been off course for almost two hours.” Mr. Stanton continued to work his station but he seemed to be having trouble finding the commander’s answer. 

Commander Holmes straitened. “Let’s get some answers. Ms. Hendricks, have the physical components checked on the three systems Mr. Stanton found—plus navigation. Mr. Stanton, try an astronomical position check to see exactly how far off we are.” 

Ten minutes later, at 0730, answers were coming in. “Commander,” Ms. Hendricks announced, “no anomalies were found in any hardware systems. But we ran another complete ship-wide software diagnostic, and we now have eight corrupted systems.” 

“Mr. Stanton, bass our course divergence increased?” 

“Yes, Commander. We are now off course by 3.75 light days, or just over 60 billion miles. Shall I attempt to correct?” 

“No. The engines are controlled by the computer, so let’s make sure this isn’t a computer malfunction.” Commander Holmes stood up from his chair. “Ms. Halstrom, assemble the senior staff in the main conference room, in five minutes.” He looked around the control room as he said, “I want the cause narrowed down for that meeting.” 

At 0742, Commander Holmes had just finished hearing reports on the crisis. “Let me make sure I understand the situation. We have been off course since 0453, but our course also appears to keep changing. Internal sensors show a radiation burst from (italics) inside (italics ended) the ship occurring from 0443 to 0608. And this radiation although not harmful to organic matter, destabilizes matter existing in a quantum state. And all the memory every computer uses is in a quantum state. This means that not only are all static data corrupted, but also every ship system, and all of our AI’s self-modifying code. On top of that, we can’t contact anyone on Earth or Terra Nova because communications have also been affected by the computer. Did I forget anything?” He looked intently around the room at the dozen crew members and experts. They met his gaze with serious looks and a few small nods of agreement. 

One computer tech raised his hand, then lowered it as he answered in a voice indicating his slight intimidation, “Sir, since the bursts stopped at 0608 and haven’t reoccurred, we don’t know what caused it or exactly where it came from. We can’t even be sure it won’t happen again.” ~

“You haven’t been able to eliminate any cause?” The commander looked around the room incredulously. “Am I to understand that it’s just as likely to be microscopic wormholes, as an engine surge, or sabotage, or little green people from Alpha Centauri?” 

“Sir,” the chief engineer responded, “with all due respect, we only had time to check the likely possibilities before this meeting. We’ve eliminated those, but we’re still looking into the unlikely possibilities.” 

Commander Holmes took a calming breath. “Alright. I want to be kept informed about what’s being checked and the results.” He took another look around the room and opened his arms invitingly as he said, “OK people. How do we fix the computer problem? What are our options?” 

“Sir,” senior software analyst Elizabeth Halstrom interrupted, “we’ve sent Arthur Kingston a status update, and he’s online now.” ~

“Good.” Commander Holmes sounded slightly relieved. “Arthur,” he said addressing a holosim head floating in the middle of the table, “What do you think?” 

“The longer the corrupted systems operate, the more unstable they will become. Especially the AI’s, which run most of the city and ship. The best option I see is a full system purge.” Murmurs and glances were exchanged by the group at the table. “I know this is extreme, but we need to stop the corruption from spreading before real damage is done to the ship.” 

“What’s involved?” the commander asked. 

“First, we need to back up all uncorrupted data generated since midnight. Everything prior to that is already backed up.” 

“Arthur,” Halstrom started, “we could create holosims of the data and code—since holosims are persistent and don’t use computer memory. It’ll take a lot more space, but we can then download the holosims back to the computer memory later.”

“Good, Liz,” Arthur said in her direction. Then he faced the commander again. “The next thing that needs to be done is to shut down every computer on the ship—and I mean everything. Then we’ll have to purge and reset all memory. Finally, we will have to restore all data and programs from the protected archives. If all goes well, it should take less than five minutes.” 

Commander Holmes addressed the room. “Problems with this plan?” ~

The timid computer tech started to raise his hand, but just spoke instead. “Sir, nearly everything on the ship will stop functioning while the computers are down. We won’t lose power to anything…” he paused a second to think, “and all autonomic functions should still operate—like gravity, life support, lights… but, we don’t know for sure.” 

Arthur jumped in, “Commander, we tested all sorts of scenarios while the ship’s software was being developed. But we never tested a complete computer shutdown. He’s right, we can’t guarantee that all autonomic systems will remain operational.” 

“OK, let’s say they all stay up. What about putting all the software back on. You said we would restore it from the protected archives. How do we know they weren’t affected too?” 

Arthur was prepared for this question. “First, no data can go into or out of the archives without a specific sequence of human controlled steps. Meaning that no onboard AI could have altered the archive—no matter how hard it tried. Second, there is extra shielding around the archives that can block energy at the quantum level.” 

Ms. Halstrom spoke up: “Also, Commandeer, we ran a checksum on the entire archive, and no corruption was found.” 

The commander was silent for a full 30 seconds before speaking. “I appreciate everyone’s input on this plan. And, despite the risks, I think it’s our best shot. However, everything you are telling me comes from data you received from the computer—which we now know is unreliable. I have to take precautions in case you’re wrong—in case the computer is wrong.” He straightened in his chair. “Here’s what I want done. First, send out a ship-wide alert to have everyone go to a safety zone. I want every single one of the 100,800 people on the Argos safely inside before we shut down the computers. Second, send an emergency transport to pick up Arthur Kingston. I want him here when the doors shut. Third, back up all uncorrupted data to holosims. I want to be able to start the computer purge in under 10 minutes. Fourth, collapse the warp field, and bring us to a full stop. And people,” Holmes looked at everyone and softened his expression, “no need to cause panic by talking to anyone outside this room about how serious this situation really is. Work the problem and we’ll be back to normal in 15 minutes. Dismissed.” 

The commander watched as everyone left the room, and Arthur’s image disappeared. Then he ran his fingers through his hair as he said to himself, “You almost convinced me with that last line. Almost.” He straightened himself and, with purpose and determination, left the room. 

In the two minutes it took Arthur to arrive at the control room, everything had been done except for the computer shutdown. ~

“Liz,” Arthur said as he walked in, “have you transferred the boot code, archive transfer protocols, and restart sequence to a holosim card, so that we can restart the main computer after the purge?” 

“Yes, and I copied everything directly from the protected archives to make sure it’s not corrupted.” 

“30 seconds to doors. 60 seconds to computer purge,” came an announcement from one of the control room crew. 

“Is everything ready for the computer shutdown, purge, reloading, and restart?” asked Commander Holmes. 

“Yes sir,” came replies from everyone. 

*****

Fifteen seconds later, Ashley and Ben Kingston heard the door of their apartment lock. The red haze of the emergency lights filled their apartment. “How long do you think the computers will be down?” Ben asked as he sat down next to his mother on the couch. His worried look betrayed his attempt to appear calm. 

“Hey Ben,” Ashley said as she put a reassuring hand on her son’s knee. 

“I’m OK. I’m not worried.” 

“What about the fact that all the computers are being shut off? Everything on the ship runs on computers. They even sent a special shuttle for Dad. You know that means it’s bad.” 

“I guess I just see the situation differently. I’ve known your father a long time. He wasn’t just in charge of the team that created all of Argos’ computer programs, he put over a year of his life into testing it. I don’t see it as a bad sign that they called him to the control center. I see it as a good sign that he’s where he needs to be, to make sure everything turns out fine.” 

Ben thought about that for a few seconds. Then he heard a beep as all artificial life on Argos blinked out. He took a deep breath and said, “I didn’t think of it that way. But isn’t that a really idealistic view? I just hope you’re right. Maybe—” He stopped as a confused expression came over his face and his breathing became labored. “Are you having trouble breathing?” he asked his mother. 

“Yes,” she said without panicking. 

Ben stood up and checked the vent slits at the ceiling and floor of the room. “I think,” he whispered, “the air coming in has stopped, but the air going out is still being sucked out of the room.” He paused to catch his breath. “If it’s that way all over the ship, everyone is going to pass out in a couple of minutes. And then—” 

“Come sit down, Ben,” Ashley assured. “Relax your breathing. Dad will fix it.” 

Ben noticed that his mother didn’t seem to be struggling as much as he was. He sat down next to her, forced himself to relax, and slowed his breathing. 

*****

Arthur Kingston was breathing shallowly as he stood and waited for the system to confirm that the purge was complete. ~

“How long… will the… reload take?” Commander Holmes asked between breaths. 

“About twelve minutes… for everything… but the core… should be up in… under 30 seconds.” Arthur sat back down. “The ventilation should… be working once… the core is… reloaded.” Arthur was finding it harder to breathe. He knew that if the computer core wasn’t functioning in 90 seconds, he would pass out. 

It took another 70 seconds before all memory was wiped clean. Arthur and Elizabeth then rushed to insert the bootable holosim card, and then shut off and restart the main computer. Each second brought another labored breath. It was taking too long. Fifteen more seconds passed, and Liz collapsed backwards into her chair. Arthur positioned his thumb over the control pad. He just needed to stay conscious long enough to start the core reload from the archive. He couldn’t catch his breath. His vision was blurring. He could no longer clearly see the  progress on the screen. Had it stopped? He couldn’t tell. He pressed his thumb to the control pad to start the core data transfer, hoping that his timing was right. But, before he could be certain, he passed out. 

*****

He woke up with his eyes closed and was relieved to be breathing normally. After a couple of deep breaths, he opened his eyes. The lights were on and in their normal white color. Ben looked over at his mother, who was also just waking up. “Are you alright, Mom?” he asked as he sat up on the couch. 

“I have a slight headache, but other than that I’m fine.” 

“I’m sure the headaches will pass.” Ben paused. ” Mom, I didn’t think we were going to make it. But somehow,” he looked questioningly at his mother, “you didn’t seem worried.” 

“I have faith in you father,” she stated matter-of-factly. 

“But faith is not logical.” 

“You are definitely your father’s son.” Ashley smiled and shook her head in mock exasperation. “But,” she said with playful satisfaction, “wasn’t it better to be unrealistic and optimistic, than practical and negative?” 

“I guess so.” Ben was uncertain as to why his mother seemed to be right. 

Ashley, focusing on the positivity of the present, put her hand on her son’s shoulder and smiled. Then, with renewed energy, she stood up and said, “Well, this has turned out to be a wonderful day. Let’s check on Dad and your sister.”

Smiling at his mother’s infectious energy, Ben said, “Ok, Mom.”  He was happy to help.  

To read Episode 3 click here