Read Voyage of the Beyonder Page 6


  Beatarkameed interrupted Hagan’s remembrance. “Sorry to bother you Mrs. Hiedalli, but I think you should know something. I lied to the Admiral, and didn’t really give him all of the evidence. In fact I still have my own copy. There’s something I think you should know about what I found over there.” Hagan Hiedalli again found herself appreciating the subtle differences between quanta-nanocoded programs, and the simple binary attempts at artificial intelligence that were made by the Negolim of her planet.

  * * *

  After the crewmember showed Fluisudal and Jaden their room for The Beyonder journey through outer space, they closed and locked the door. Then they began unpacking equipment that they would be using for space ship infiltration.

  “Did you get close enough to the Captain to obtain his security code?”

  “I’ve got a copy of it right on this hand that I shook his with.”

  It turns out Fluisudal and Jaden were actually Pripican spies on a mission from Ea to Holdus to find out what this ship is really up to.

  “Perfect. Download it to my input device and I’ll get it unencrypted. You better not have forgotten the BEAT program we need.”

  Jaden felt stung by the implication. “I remembered the BEAT program. Would you like to meet it? I think this one is quite a character.”

  His sudden show of interest acknowledged that he wanted to see it. So she pulled a small coin-sized saucer object from her pouch, which she kept draped across her back like a horse saddle. The round object had been coin shaped, and about the size of an Earth quarter. She let the object loose into the air like letting a small bird fly free. Then the object flew about the entire room before stopping in front of Fluisudal. A voice amplified itself from the floating object. “Hi there. I am Begalius, here to assist you two on your mission in my own quanta-nanocoded way. So now we are on the space ship called The Beyonder? Oh, I do love space journeys.”

  Fluisudal smiled with genuine excitement to be conversing with the quanta-nanocode being. Fluisudal couldn’t resist explaining. “We Pripicans have figured out how to use nano-scale magnetic fields to construct quantum-bits that are used to compile nanocode programs. These beings had their start as quantum-bit attempts at artificial intelligence that worked. They are known as the BEAT programs. It is an acronym that translates into Binary Electro-magnetic Artificial Thought programs.” Jaden just tolerantly smiled while already knowing what B.E.A.T. stood for.

  Begalius lived in the small object that could fly and camouflage itself with light bending invisibility. Begalius had been quantum-synchronized with the object in order to give Begalius a physical form. Otherwise Begalius had been more like a spirit on a molecular level that emitted photons. The quarter-shaped physical form gave Begalius a way of interacting with our dimension ruled by the physics of relativity from his own reality of quantum physics. Begalius would remain with The Beyonder after Jaden and Fluisudal departed after the ship reaches the far off star Holdus.

  *

  Captain Mynervood sat on the bridge to run the final checks before taking off. He had crawled through every aspect of this mission all day with his highly experienced mind to make sure there were no loose ends, and that nothing had been forgotten. The Beyonder had been a fine ship with its own virtual particle field technologies that were installed in the floors, which allowed the crew to wander around inside no matter what unbelievable high speed navigation stunts the ship did outside with its nuclear explosion driven fusion drive. Finally after a day of checking again and again, the Captain ran out of reasons to not get on with it.

  “Strek, out of the docking bay us take.”

  “Captain yes,” said Strek the Pripican navigator of the ship, as he skillfully worked the complicated controls at the helm of the bridge that existed within the detachable saucer section.

  The ship became detached from the satellite spaceport while Captain Mynervood spoke into a microphone that broadcast his voice throughout every corner of the ship. “Captain Mynervood this is. We out of the station now are pulling. We the reactor over the next few moments until acceleration begins will be warming up. There some g-effects that even the artificial gravity not might compensate for will be, but it mild like a sharp corner fast with a vehicle taking is. We off to the star Holdus for a couple years now will be taking. You about a bit more 50 days of time be than will have experienced.”

  The Captain fixed the Navigation coordinates to the predicted location of the star Holdus approximately two Earth years from the moment of take off. He squatted down on his Captain’s stool waiting for the reactor warm up to complete. The Beyonder’s nuclear reactor powered a fusion reaction during its constant acceleration and de-acceleration. This had been similar to how a hydrogen bomb achieves a fission explosion by igniting hydrogen explosions around enriched uranium material, only The Beyonder used nuclear explosions that were directed in on themselves to achieve a fusion effect with the ship’s hydrogen-packed acceleration core. The Beyonder looked suspended for a moment like a blimp floating in the purple ambient light of Magphoreus while the backside started to glow with the orange heat of magnetic field contained nuclear explosions. Suddenly a white light emitted itself out the tail of The Beyonder and the ship was gone, hyper-accelerating on course for the far off star Holdus over a light year away.

  Chapter 3

  At the relativistic equivalent of meanwhile at a planet called Caleb that orbited the star Yat, was where The Beyonder eventually would be traveling to after it stoped at the Holdus star system. The planet Caleb’s orbit had been barely within the habitable zone of the dim star Yat, and its thin atmosphere entertained temperatures that were over a hundred degrees below freezing. On the surface of this freezing planet existed a single research and teraforming facility that had been ran by the Nephricans. They were slowly melting the surrounding frozen gasses into a thicker atmosphere in an attempt to make the planet habitable for Nephrican and Pripican colonists. This facility recently had its entire staff recalled back to the star Holdus several Earth years before, to be replaced by a single Nephrican who would oversee making the planet habitable.

  The single Nephrican male in charge of teraforming the planet Caleb went by the name Prospero Napels. He sat within the heated research facility with his three tentacle legs drooped over the sides of a stool while he watched screens that displayed a spacecraft approaching the planet. He had been brooding over his overwhelming responsibility to make this planet habitable. He knew why the facility had to be abandoned for this task. His single Nephrican eye remained fixed on what had to be done to fulfill his orders.

  This assignment had not been originally intended to be such a solitary mission. Prospero actually traveled to the planet Caleb with his new wife Mir Napels on the ship that would also leave for the return journey back to Holdus with everyone else from this facility that worked here. During the four years spent in space between Holdus and Yat, Mir had became pregnant with their first child. The effects of travel near the speed of light were still mysteries to the early Nephapricans, and its effects on biology presented mathematical paradoxes to Nephricans and Pripican scientists. Nevertheless they still anxiously sought the extension of their lives by traveling that way, because prolonged life had already been known to be a very beneficial side effect. Another side effect of the near-the-speed-of-light time/space paradox had been the rapid incubation period of a pregnancy. The child had been born on the ship about the equivalent of five days after conception, and unfortunately during that time Mir only ate the meals she had been naturally inclined to eat over a five-day period. Even though Mir had been an Eagolim who had already lived a couple hundred years, and had still been young and healthy, she didn’t survive the effects of that rapid pregnancy. Mir died while giving birth in hyper acceleration space to the only other Nephrican currently living in this Caleb teraforming facility. Ever since arriving here Prospero had been raising his mutant daughter born in space as a humanoid Eagolim. Prospero’s daughter would be named Randa Napels.
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  Prospero shifted his attention from the screen monitoring the spacecraft as it still entered the atmosphere of the planet Caleb. Then he observed another screen tracking a comet approaching the planet. Prospero then felt a frustration over all the years that had been wasted trying to thicken this planet’s atmosphere, only to watch the solar winds sweep all his work away. He pressed a tentacle on the transmission button to speak to the inhabitant of the spacecraft. “You that comet back on target Beatariel right have nudged. Well done. I you the observation satellites for this afternoon’s experiment with similar accuracy am sure have positioned.”

  Then a voice with a Pripican dialect responded through a speaker. “You shall not be disappointed Prospero my master. We are sure to get excellent data from the phantom matter experiment. The phantom matter shall illuminate in the plasma flames to your amazement master.”

  “My servant then very well done. The spacecraft to the landing bay return, and we the neutrino bomb shall prepare.”

  Prospero happened to possess one of the first quanta-nanocode artificial intelligence programs named Beatariel. The Nephricans actually stole the program by cloning it during a war that had now been over a thousand Earth years in the past. Now the artificial intelligence program functioned as the loyal assistant to Prospero. Prospero had been able to use the quanta-nanocode being for controlling all the equipment at this facility.

  Prospero’s daughter walked into the room and approached her father. She wore a similar skin cloth uniform as her father, probably also made from the same father’s skin, but the similarities ended there. Prospero twisted his single eye around along with his snout so his mouth could point toward his humanoid daughter to speak. “Beatariel the spacecraft soon will be landing. You while we a neutrino bomb into the star Yat drop should stay. We a glimpse of phantom matter on this screen right here as the flames the planet Yat-1 engulf should actually see.”

  Randa placed her five-fingered hands on her father’s tentacle shoulders as she gazed at his single eye with her two eyes. “I to have you and Beatariel with to stay would love. I so bored around here sometimes get. I what phantom matter is don’t know, but I it a sight to behold am sure is.”

  Prospero gargled out a laugh from his snout while looking back at his daughter. She had been completely alien to him with her body and bald two-eyed head, but still he loved his daughter with an admiring eye. She had similar colored skin with no snout, but the mouth still looked similar. Randa’s mouth even reminded Prospero of her now dead mother’s mouth. He then began to teach his young second-generation Eagolim daughter. “Phantom matter a product of the virtual particle phenomenon of the universe is.”

  She partly understood that. “You gravity so mean.”

  “Yes. The virtual particle phenomenon molecules together binds, and my tentacle when it the table hits to ‘off back. I solidity am,’ tells. Planetary objects particle fields with the star in its tugging gravity with also exchange. The planet’s virtual particle field the star to tells, ‘off back! I a planet am.’ Today we the phantom matter that when virtual particles real particles become forms going to see. You should stay.”

  The physics of Nephrican science, at this point in their understanding, proved gravity to be a relativistic manifestation and expansion of what Earth physicists call the Strong Nuclear Force, which binds molecules together. This led to the understanding that the Strong Nuclear Force extended way beyond its role as molecular glue on the quantum level to manifest as a naturally flowing virtual particle phenomenon that manifests along the curvature of space, and orients to mass polarity points.

  Then the conversation became distracted when a sub-hyper-acceleration spacecraft landed on the freezing planet outside. Sub-hyper-acceleration had been the formal label given to spacecraft that didn’t have hyper-acceleration drives. They were basically solar spacecraft for travel within the boundaries of a single solar system.

  The airlocks of the ship opened for a short while, and then closed, but nobody got off the ship. Then the airlock to the landing pad outside also opened and closed as if it let somebody in from outside. Both Prospero and Randa responded as if someone really did just arrive there from the spacecraft, which had just landed from outer space. Then the invisible pilot of the spacecraft outside spoke through a speaker on the control panel. “The mission to correct the trajectory of the coming comet was a success master, and the observation satellites are ready to record the solar flare information. The show is ready whenever you want to initiate it master Prospero.”

  Randa looked confused for a second as she tried to understand Beatariel’s Pripican dialect. Prospero had been more accustomed to the alien grammar. “Beatariel excellent. Us the satellite on the screen let get, and the first neutrino bomb prepare.”

  “As you wish my master.”

  Nephricans and Pripicans were just beginning to study the mass and corona effects of the 15 legendary stars that would become Nephapricus. The coronas of stars were revealed to be the virtual particles, or gravitons of the stars themselves, which would deflect passing photons during the brief period that virtual particles accelerate along the curvature of space through existence. Phantom matter was made up of sub-atomic particles that were formed at times when virtual particles occasionally stumble their way into becoming real particles.

  Prospero used the technology of the quanta-nanocode being named Beatariel to control all the equipment at the facility. It had been like a friendly ghost in the machines. Beatariel actually existed as a little microscopic being that darted and dashed about in the room and through the circuitry of the equipment like a tiny sprite to turn Prospero’s will into reality as he commanded.

  They watched a video satellite feed that came from the sun. The video had been adjusted to not let in all the light from the star Yat. Therefore the planet Yat-1, also known as Curirem, had been visible against a dark backdrop of space even though the planet Curirem really orbited very close to the star, and had always been bathed in Yat’s light. The satellite that observed the planet Curirem also had a stash of neutrino bombs on board.

  This had been what motivated Prospero for this mission to teraform the planet Caleb. His solitary predicament allowed him an entire star system all to himself in order to conduct his own controversial phantom matter experiments. He intended to study the effects of super-heated phantom matter. Similar experiments had already led Pripicans to invent a mass accelerator that had currently been used to increase speeds for virtual particle driven crafts.

  “The neutrino bomb Beatariel launch!”

  Suddenly the satellite feed displayed a flash of light as the first neutrino bomb had been launched with calculated precision into the star Yat. The star Yat responded with a giant plasma flare of solar indigestion. Across the view screen giant flames of solar plasma slowly approached the planet Curirem through space at thousands of miles a second.

  As the flames of the star engulfed the solar system’s closest planet to the star Yat on the view screen, they were all treated to a rare spectacle of nature when the invisible phantom matter in the universe actually becomes visible.

  Randa let out an “Ooooh!” sound as the planet Curirem suddenly displayed a bright Saturn-like ring of light around its equator. The ring of light around the planet Curirem had been made up of super-heated gravitons and phantom matter where it happened to be in its densest concentration. The light grew as the plasma flares passed by the planet, and then the phosphorescent ring went out as fast as it had been turned on.

  Prospero and Randa Observing the Phantom Matter Experiment

  Randa became overjoyed by the spectacle like a small child watching a firework. She had just been a young girl with a single parent living alone on a freezing planet. On top of that she had been a two-footed, two-eyed mutant freak of nature that looked nothing like the rest of her species. This made Randa a very lonely girl whose only real friend in the world had been a microscopic quanta-nanocoded artificial intelligence program that talked funny.
Such a life as Randa’s will try to find joy and entertainment in just about anything they can find.

  Prospero greedily poured over the wealth of data pouring in as the solar storm engulfed the defenseless planet in flames. He secretly wished he could bath the planet Caleb in a similar solar storm of flame, but they were too far away to really heat up the planet that way. To make the planet Caleb warm enough to support his form of life, Prospero had another plan. The planet Caleb had just a thin atmosphere because it didn’t have a strong enough magnetic field to protect the atmosphere from erosion by solar winds. To remedy that, Prospero sent Beatariel to an incoming comet in order to point its trajectory directly at the planet Caleb. Prospero calculated that the carefully directed impact on the other side of the planet would magnetize the planet’s mostly metal core. Prospero figured that would give the atmosphere a thick blanket of solar wind resistant magnetic field.

  * * *

  The Beyonder hyper-accelerated at .6 times the speed of light between the stars Ea and Holdus, and had not yet got at the point when it had to turn itself around to begin hyper-deceleration before its final arrival coming to a stop at the star Holdus. The Beyonder displayed the latest displacement technology, which had been a precursor to faster-than-light warp technology. The Beyonder had a bulbous instrument in the front of the ship that used the energy of the ship’s incredible speed to define it beyond the location of any significant object in its path, thus avoiding any space debris that crossed the ship’s trajectory.

  The antimatter created in the Big Bang creation event tacked itself upon all the matter of this universe to create an anti-matter universe on the other side of this universe. This anti-matter universe faced away from the positive universe, and also away from our perceptions. This also kept all matter in both universes from being mutually annihilated. Every positive charged sub-atomic quark of every atom in this universe also is a negatively charged sub-atomic quark on the other side in the anti-matter universe. Therefore everything in this universe had an anti-matter counter part mirroring everything that happened. Warp space had been achieved by the Nephapricans attaining the ability to switch the quark-charge around an object, to allow it to pass through reality beyond the speed of light by actually existing beyond this universe between the matter and anti-matter universes.