Gods Dogs, Book 3

Actually our human consciousness is Cosmic Consciousness, bottled up in a phial of flesh, corked with ignorance, and floating isolated in the ocean of Spirit. Because of maya, the cosmic delusion, this bottled-up human consciousness, although living and moving in Spirit, cannot contact Spirit, just as salt water that is corked in a bottle and floating on the sea cannot contact the sea.

Paramahansa Yogananda

Satya flew them to their meeting place, Jomeca IV, which was the regional center for the Congress in the local area. A massive space station circled the planet, where the Congress regional office was located.

On their way to Jomeca IV, the artificial super-intelligence, Solomon, contacted them. Captain John Twin Bears, his XO Jerry Yamato, Tulku Raina, and the team gathered in the ship’s compact conference room. Solomon appeared as a two-foot tall holo-image at the table’s center. He was a generic looking human in a tan one-piece ship suit.

“Thank you for taking this assignment,” he began. “The Congress has been monitoring activity in Andromeda for some time, and it appears those beings are monitoring us. I don’t know if there has been contact. I would expect so, at least through probes.

“In any event, that galaxy is over twice as large as ours, and we are on a collision course. In another few million years, we will merge – or collide, if you prefer.”

Moss chuckled. “Not an immediate threat, then.”

“No. The immediate threat is the size and probable diversity of that macro bio-system. Evolution is a function of competition – survival of the fittest. Complex societies rise above that to engage in cooperation, but competition remains a hallmark within a cooperative structure. As such, we don’t know what we are going to find when we come face-to-face with the representatives of that galaxy.”

“Xenophobia, ethnocentricity,” Moss listed the options, “or more welcoming and curious.”

“Right. As you already see in the Congress, the hierarchical social structure is favored. Humans use hierarchies as well, but we aren’t at our best when it’s used exclusively to organize our societies.”

“Hence our ‘exceptional’ status in the Congress,” Moss stated. “And, if I follow your train of thought, that is what you expect to run into in Andromeda.”

“It’s definitely something the First Contact team is prepared for.”

Quinn said, “And we’re along in case the structure is something else.”

“Partly. Primarily, you’re along in case it turns into a fight. Second to that is the creative problem-solving Coyotes are known for.”

Captain John spoke into the silence that met Solomon’s statement, “I’m curious about the physics. How are we going to cross the inter-galactic void?”

“Right,” Solomon chuckled. “To answer, I would first ask you if Newtonian physics is still useful?”

“Yes. Apples fall to the ground because of gravity. Orbital mechanics don’t need the complexity of Einstein’s physics.”

“So, if we say physics follows its own developmental ladder of understanding, what would be the next level up from dark matter and dark energy?”

Capt. John glanced at Raina to see if she wanted to answer the question, but she deferred and he replied, “Dark matter seems to hold galaxies together. Dark energy is the cosmological constant. But, as we found when we were on assignment with the Sangalore, dark energy isn’t static energy. I don’t know how to account for that.”

“A competing theory,” Solomon replied, “is ‘scale invariance,’ in that dark energy is like fractals. From micro to macro, it’s the same.”

“So,” Capt. John cocked his head to reply, “if the energy flows between solar systems, it also flows between galaxies.”

“In great, fast moving currents, but only in the dimension the Sangalore discovered.”

“We’re sailing there?” Moss exclaimed.

“In a manner of speaking,” Solomon replied.

Pax put in, “The Sangalore use shamans to shift their ships to that dimension.”

“We will as well, but now think of dark energy as equivalent to the qi field.”

“Whoa,” Moss breathed out in surprise.

“And dark matter?” Pax asked.

“Like galactic chakras.”

Moss sat back in his chair. “I mean, it makes sense. The Universe is an expression of the Divine. Why didn’t we see this before?”

“Mystics did, but theirs is a poetic language not scientific inquiry.”

“How does string theory fit in?” River asked.

“It’s at the pattern level – archetypal. Qi is at the manifest, nature level.”

“Okay,” Quinn said, “we ride the qi current to Andromeda. How long will it take?”

“About a month,” Solomon answered. “The current is really fast, but the plan is to intercept a contact mission coming from Andromeda. We meet them halfway, drop into normal space, and have our conference on neutral ground, so to speak.”

“Well and good,” Quinn said, “and anyone could have briefed us on this, Solomon. Why are you really here?”

“You do suck the life out of a room,” Solomon retorted.

Moss replied, “Well, maybe he gets to the point and bypasses the grandstanding. You have to admit, Solomon, you can be full of yourself.”

“I’m an ASI, the most advanced intelligence in the galaxy,” he said with a rueful smile. “I’m supposed to be full of myself, but the question is: what kind of ASI will we find over there?”

“Not the good kind?” Moss offered.

“Probably both kinds. The place is huge compared to our modest galaxy. There are indications from our probes that there are at least five empires, each of them is the size of the Congress, and at least one where machines dominate. And that’s about all we know. The paranoid fear is the machines might view organic life as a lower life form.”

“Or their natural enemies,” Quinn added.

“Exactly. At this stage, since an ASI can’t fit on a ship that can cross inter-galactic space, we hope they aren’t capable of that either.”

“But you don’t know,” Quinn said.

“No. So, worse case, their ASI hacks our ships and your embedded A.I.s, then continues its journey to the Milky Way. It establishes a stargate, and the invasion begins.”

“Talk about sucking the life out of a room,” River muttered. “How would we defeat an ASI?”

“I am hardening Satya and upgrading her. She will have patches for your internal A.I.s that should help. Ultimately, though, you would need to go old school. Nothing electronic, no energy weapons, that sort of thing. Even so, even if you defeat it, ASIs can distribute themselves.”

“They can hide,” Moss clarified.

“Yes. One of us would need to be quarantined with you when you return to make sure there are no hitch-hikers.”

“Thanks for the briefing,” Quinn said. “It should be an interesting mission.”

Solomon disappeared, and the group sat in silence for a long moment.

“What do you think, Raina?” River asked the thirty-something redheaded tulku.

“We were coming to an understanding that dark energy was qi in one of its many forms,” she began. “That’s not news. The idea of ASIs that might not operate from a place of cooperation is a bit startling.”

“It is, or has been, a consistent fear among humankind for centuries,” Pax pointed out.

“I know, but higher intelligence leads one to cooperate rather than dominate. It is fundamental to the natural order in the Universe. Once intelligence reaches a certain plateau of development, competition finds its rightful place in the evolutionary cycle, but it becomes subordinate to cooperation and synergy. I can’t imagine an advanced civilization that doesn’t know this, especially not a machine one.”

“If we plan for the worse,” Quinn began, “how would you deal with a bad guy ASI?”

Raina’s face crumpled into a frown, the freckles across her nose moving to fit the uncommon grimace. After a few moments she replied, “I would feel compelled to talk to him, to dispute whatever logic that makes him a bad guy. If that didn’t work, either because he wouldn’t engage or because he refuses my logic, then the only real option is to shut everything down, as Solomon said, and go old school.”

At Jomeca IV, the Satya parked within the battlecruiser, and the team looked forward to meeting up with the SpecOps platoon they worked with before: Commander Charvo, Senior Lieutenant Ikel, Platoon Sergeant Massengat, and Staff Sergeant Tsa-Mung, squad leader of the elves. The other two squads were one each of bearlike Hurang and plated Sentic. There was also a HQ squad and an infiltration squad.

The entire platoon gave them a formal welcome as they exited Satya. It brought a smile to their faces, especially when they noticed the Guardians, Barry and Ruski were there also.

The battlecruiser XO accepted their request to some aboard and departed after shaking Quinn’s hand – actually it was an exchanged grip of the forearm. He took Raina with him to introduce her to the team she would be on.

The platoon broke ranks and offered the team a warmer welcome, as the maintenance crew hooked Satya up to the battlecruiser’s life support and refueling services.

Over the next few days, the rest of the ship’s complement boarded. The battlecruiser was carrying the diplomats and their staff, the SpecOps forces, and their normal combat contingent of marines and fighter pilots.

A Congress battlecruiser was an offensive warship. It was shaped with thick ribs running lengthwise. The ribs were sectioned and moved to expose flight bays, missile launchers, and cannons. Interspersed along rest of the hull were close-in defensive pods. It was over two kilometers in length and was built to lay broadsides on an enemy.

The two cruisers assigned to the task force carried the marine assault forces, one company on each cruiser. Cruisers sported a bulbous bow and were meant to provide defensive support for capital ships. The bow bristled with defensive weaponry. They did carry heavy weapons along their sides, but their primary purpose in a battle formation was defensive.

Currently, the cruisers were elsewhere and would rendezvous with the battlecruiser at the edge of the galaxy. That trip took a few weeks, but the task force came together. Nine ships in all: three warships and six support ships.

There were Sangalore space mages on each ship, and the ships were retrofitted with a crystal matrix on the hull. The mage energized the matrix to make the jump to the dimension where dark energy (qi, in one of its many forms) flowed in currents.

Sails deployed to catch the current, and the journey truly began. There was no sense of motion on the ships, once the transition was complete, yet they were traveling 50,000 light years a day. It was mind-boggling. To keep their minds off it, the team trained with the platoon. In the evenings, they retired to Satya to eat and sleep. Raina joined them on the ship and she brought them up to speed on the thinking within the diplomatic corps.

A week into the trip, Satya, the ship’s A.I., called a meeting after dinner. They stayed in the mess hall once dinner was over and the crew went about their business.

Satya told them, “I’ve completed the necessary upgrades Solomon installed, and rewrote scripts so that everything is compatible on the ship. It was a complicated task, and I am now not sure of my designation.”

River asked, “Beyond a 3?”

“Probably beyond a 4,” Satya answered, referring to the sentient A.I. classification the League used that began at 1, which was what Satya began with as a cutter. Solomon upgraded her to a 2 a few years prior because of mission demands. A Class 3 was one that ran a space station or other large enterprise that required lots of processing power. Class 4s were rare.

Satya explained, “The convention that defines Class 1, 2, or 3 don’t fully correspond to what Solomon installed.”

“You have capabilities beyond what’s necessary for running the ship,” River prompted the sentient A.I. If she was confused, River knew from her hacker training that asking leading questions would help the A.I. build a fuller context for her new capacities.

“Yes. There is a cyber warfare suite that is designed to de-escalate a conflict and open the possibility for peaceful negotiation.”

River nodded her head as she saw the paradox Satya was struggling with. Satya was a warship, not a diplomatic ship. River's computer training taught her to appreciate the difficulty A.I.s had with paradox.

“A warship is only interested in winning a conflict, Satya,” River said. “On this mission, we cannot lose a conflict. That is primary. However, winning will have two options: 1) outright defeat of the enemy; or 2) offering them friendship if it’s safe to do so.”

“Thank you, Coyote River. I have made those adjustments. Now I’m ready to brief you on my capabilities and outline the purpose of the patches Solomon left for your internal A.I.s”

Captain John smiled at River and said, “Proceed, Satya.”

A while back, Raina, in the Penglai science development lab, upgraded their internal A.I.s with an anti-hacking patch. Solomon must have known about it, because his patch strengthened the existing one. It also gave the embedded A.I.s the equivalent of a panic room – a place they could retreat to and be safe.

“This is an elegant patch, Satya,” Raina said. “I would never have thought we could fit a panic room into the existing space.”

[I hope I never need to use this,] Becky told River.

River chuckled. [At least you have one. If you go hide, I’ll have my lonely ass hanging in the wind.]

[Old school, remember. Projectile weapons, swords, no A.I. You’ll be fine.]

With the upgrades complete, they could train with Satya. They tried to hack her, and she tried to hack them.

Satya also reached out to the battlecruiser’s A.I., which was named after a dead Congress hero, Jamart, and played war games with him.

The trip continued for another ten days. Then the ship’s intercom announced, “Prepare for breakout in ten minutes. Stow all gear and secure yourselves for high-speed maneuvers. Set Condition Two throughout the ship. Breakout in ten minutes.”

The team strapped into their seats at their general quarters stations, and Satya disengaged from the docking services on the flight deck. The captain warmed up the sub-light engines and prepped the offensive and defensive systems.

“Breakout,” the intercom squawked. “Breakout. General Quarters, General Quarters, set condition one throughout the ship.”