Am Ouil floated by his locker, eating stuffed fried pastries from a paper bag, staring at two screens on the wall. The smaller screen showed their space station, a mile-long cylinder, from far enough away that the remains of their interstellar ship could be seen behind it. An occasional light flickering from the ship was due to the ongoing efforts to harvest materials for robots, interplanetary vehicles and whatever else would be necessary for their life here. The larger screen had an enhanced view of the distant yellow sun and the giant planet orbiting it, one of three. The colony being constructed at the leading Trojan point could just barely be seen.
A hand fell on Am's shoulder. Am's pointed ears twitched. Using the door of his locker for support, Am swung around deftly in the zero gravity to face the person who had used his shoulder to check her progress. He smiled.
"Hello, Am. Are you coming or going?" asked Brill. Brill was slightly younger than Am, a young adult, both being of the third generation born since their people arrived in this new star system.
"Oh, hi. No, I'm just taking a break. But I don't expect the probe to last much longer. I should be off in a couple of hours. Why?"
"I heard that you were playing handball again and thought I'd ask if you wanted to play."
"No, Brill, I've been coaching some of the more promising young players but my arm is still too messed up for me to start playing yet. I'm still in therapy." A fabric brace could just barely be seen protruding from under the right sleeve of his shirt.
"Your arm? I heard you strained your wrist. I knew you dropped out at the quarter finals. But that was a long time ago. What happened to your arm."
"My arm was broken just above the wrist. Both bones. I was just a few points away from winning the last game of the preliminaries when my opponent ..."
"Dourlas?"
"Yes, Dourlas. After he delivered a fast ball, instead of slowing himself to get in position for my return, he went into a fast spin so he could kick my arm just as I was hitting the ball, breaking it. He couldn't recover to return my ball, so it was my point."
Am tossed a paper towards the disposal chute. It missed, so a small robot retrieved it and shot it accurately into the chute.
"I served again, left handed, and caught him by surprise, so he couldn't set up and I got that point, too. He was ready for the next one, returning my serve with a fast ball. I replied with a slow ball that he misjudged for the game point."
"So you beat Dourlas left-handed after he broke your right arm? I heard he was disqualified and that the judges had some kind of disagreement about it."
"The win was recorded right after I scored the game point. I immediately went to a medical station to report my injury and forfeit the next game. Then the judges reacted and disqualified Dourlas, taking away my win. They almost disqualified me for continuing to play with an obviously serious injury. But when they cooled down, they gave me a fair win and made Dourlas's disqualification permanent. He's been banned from all future tournament level sports. I got off with a scolding and no official action taken."
"Permanent disqualification? That seems like rather a harsh punishment. There must be more to it than that?"
Brill placed her hand on Am's arm and if it was there any longer than necessary to stabilize herself to keep from floating too near or too far away then Am didn't appear to notice. Am dug again into his bag, pulling out a flat green fruit as big as his hand. Scoring it near one end with his thumbnail allowed him to quickly remove the thick rind, which he placed in the disposal chute. Breaking the white inner flesh in half to reveal the large seeds, some pink but most bright red, he offered half to Brill, who quickly accepted. And if her hand lingered longer than necessary on Am's he again failed to notice.
"After the game, when Dourlas thought he wasn't being observed, he tossed the shoe he had struck me with down the disposal chute. Peacekeepers had been watching through their cameras and ordered robots to retrieve it. When they had a close look they found it wasn't a court shoe at all but a combat shoe. They decided his attack was premeditated and brought Dourlas to trial. He was found guilty of assault and sent inwards to the trailing colony."
"The trailing colony? I thought that the stable point trailing the orbit of the gas giant was unoccupied and that they were building the colony at the leading stable point."
"Most of the effort -- almost all of the effort -- goes into the leading colony, but they wanted to build an observatory and the trailing point was a good place to put it. They needed some habitats and a maintenance crew, but there isn't much there beyond the observatory. It isn't a very nice place to live."
Imagining the conditions at the trailing colony caused the fur on Brill's neck and head to stand up briefly and her ears to twitch. Am should have noticed but didn't.
"So how is your arm healing? When will you be able to play again?"
"That's up to the doctors. They're happy with my progress so far, so it shouldn't be too much longer. But I've discovered I enjoy training talented kids as much as playing in tournaments. I may just play a few odd games now and then and spend more of my time teaching. But what about you, Brill. What have you been up to? Still herding robots? Are you coming or going?"
"Going, with a couple of days free, which is why I was looking for a game. Let me know when they give you the go-ahead. I'll take it easy on you. And yes, I'm still herding robots. Salvage work. After that probe generator burned out, they let it cool and then tried to find something to salvage. Anything that big, almost solid metal, takes a long time to cool after getting red hot. They had my robots cutting and digging for twenty days without finding anything worth keeping. Nothing but blended scrap metal. They should have scrapped it before the last rebuild -- there was no way they could fix it to handle that kind of power again. The supervisors say their instruments show that sixty percent of the power went into forcing the probe prototype into multispace, but I expect that at least that much power went into burning it up. I'm surprised it produced a probe you could track."
"The probe it produced was perfectly normal, so far as any of the instruments were able to determine. After it got out of the sensor module, though, we weren't able to track it very far before it got lost in some kind of noise field. That noise field is getting close very fast."
"I hadn't heard about any noise field. Any idea what causes it?"
Am found a hard, black seed in the fruit. Carefully removing it, he placed it in a small jar in his locker that held a number of similar seeds. A friend of his made jewelry and decorations from them.
"No idea. But all the instruments in the robot that tracks a probe out of the instrumentation module suddenly overload and we get no more readings. Something is out there and getting closer, and we have no idea what it is. Pretty soon we'll find it blanking out readings within the instrumentation module itself, perhaps before the current probe gets all of the way out."
Finishing the white fruit, Am pulled a paper packet out of his bag and opened it up to show a number of dark bluish berries, which he again offered to Brill. She used both hands to take a few, again making sure to have extended hand contact with Am. Again Am was oblivious.
Brill continued, "In addition to trying to convert scrap from the probe generator to materials we can use to build a new one, my robots have to begin the construction of the new probe generator. We may have to get materials from the old ship. If anything useful is left, that is."
"Well, if this noise problem hits soon, you may wind up not having to build a new probe generator at all. We may all shut down and move inwards to one of the colonies."
"I hope not. I like what I'm doing here."
"There should be lots of work herding robots in the leading colony, but my instrumentation experience probably only qualifies me for something at the observatory in the trailing colony."
"Don't even joke about something like that. Besides, I know you've received offers for jobs down inwards. You'll have your choice of jobs. If we have to shut down, that is, and I haven't heard anything about it before this."
"Well, we don't know what it is. Nothing shows up but the noise. We haven't identified any source. Maybe we'll find a way to work around it."
Am crumpled the paper that had held the berries together with the now empty bag and tossed them in the disposal chute, took a sip of water from a plastic bottle in his locker, then closed the locker. "Look, this is likely to be a short shift; the probe is due to fade away soon. Would you like me to give you a call when I'm done? If it isn't too long?"
Brill brightened visibly. "I'd love that. I'll be waiting."
"That sounds good. But I have to get back now. I'll be in touch."
Am pushed off, floating across the locker room to the passageway that led to the instrumentation module, a tube as long as the station itself.
Lost.
No whisper, no twitter, no echo, no trace -- the signal was lost. Finally. After four days of tracking signals from the invisible microscopic thing they had created, the signal was gone. Now the team could stand down for a day before they had to search for the next batch of signals.
The probes that were pushed into multispace no longer existed in this universe. They obeyed different physical laws. Passing freely through the densest of metals, they were drawn towards the nearby sun by its energy more than by its mass, accelerating faster than one mass drawn to another by gravity.
The first probes, produced many centuries previously to test theories of multi-dimensional spaces, were simple things. Their signals were faint and hard to detect and would fade away and return regularly every five days. But they confirmed that multi-dimensional spaces existed and could be reached. More complex probes were designed with new capabilities to look back into our universe.
There was a mismatch. The scale was wrong, the physical scale as well as the time scale. Being hammered by a bolt of energy powerful enough to drive them into multispace but precise enough not to destroy them, the prototypes shrunk physically and stretched out over time. They functioned according to new laws. It took centuries of experimentation and theoretical work to produce that first simple signal. Eventually they learned how to make the probes look back into our universe and produce recognizable images. Most appeared to be star fields, strange stars visible nowhere near their location. Objects such as electrons and atomic nuclei appeared as streaks, as they would in a cloud chamber. Some images were simply strange and unrecognizable.
Increasingly smarter probes were programmed to serve their creators, to replicate, to combine with their copies in new and better ways, to establish communications with their builders. Replication worked. None of the probes seemed capable of doing more as they drifted slowly towards the nearest dominant energy source, the yellow sun so close. Am's race repeated the process in the thousands of colonies they occupied. The probes accumulated in the centers of stars, continuing to execute their programs, building bigger and better versions of themselves, as Am's people were about to learn.
Parking the interstellar vehicle at the periphery of the system where they could probe multispace, Am's ancestors commanded their robots to remove the vehicle habitats, sending all but one of them, full of hopeful colonists, to the giant planet inwards. The remaining habitat was reduced in length to under a mile. Am's great grandparents spent their lives in the conversion of vehicle to multiple interplanetary vehicles. His paternal grandfather, Gorm Ouil, one of the scientists who constructed the probe generator and the monitoring equipment, was still a scientist on the project, as were both of Am's parents.
Not all of their efforts were directed to the investigation of the strange matter. Am's siblings and cousins had moved to new habitats their robots constructed near the giant planet as a permanent colony. Others helped build giant vehicles to be sent to other suitable stars nearby. The colony complexes were well under way. More complicated interstellar vehicles, with their gigantic engines, were being built more slowly. The two major colony complexes now had space for hundreds of times as many individuals as existed. Large families were once more in favor. Am's family and friends constantly introduced him to suitable young ladies in the hope that he would move inwards and start a new family of his own. Am, however, was content to play with his part of the probe puzzle. Besides, marriage wouldn't force him to move, as there was plentiful space in the probe research habitat.
When the latest probe emerged from the walls of the cooling generator globe, its position and velocity had been determined quickly and precisely so the ovoid sensor array traveling down the long, dark science module tube could be correctly positioned. Instrument stations monitoring the sensors floated near the sensor array where technicians controlled the hundreds of sensors in the array.
The probe responded exactly as expected, going from seven distinct transmissions to eight while it lasted. All of the signals came from a space about the size of a grain of rice and all were faint. Am and his team monitored the instruments that studied the device until the signal vanished.
The lights came up. Screens dimmed. Technicians closed data files and sent them to the analysis group. Everything was finished. Dazed, Am Ouil stared blankly into space as he sat at his station. He remained there much longer than his shift demanded, well into the next shift. Kinram Kwausch, Am's supervisor, noticed Am sitting at his post, swaying slightly in the zero gravity as the instrument station moved to its resting position, the last one to go. Always the last, but usually the most aware. Am had a strange expression on his face. Kinram shook Am, gently at first, then more forcefully. Am finally turned to Kinram, focusing on his face. "It spoke to me!," he exclaimed.
"What do you mean, it spoke to you? What spoke to you? What did it say?" Kinram was puzzled, Am seemed bewildered.
"I think it was the probe. It said, 'I have chosen you,' but it hasn't explained. I think it would have but I was too confused to ask clear questions. I have a million questions but couldn't express any of them. It broke off when you shook me."
Kinram considered. Had it been a real contact? Am was tired from frequent shifts. Am frequently worked extra shifts. Could he have imagined the words? He would have to have an immediate medical exam. His own supervisors must be notified. Had any instrument technician previously made such a claim? That probably didn't matter but he could research it later.
"Am, you need a medical check and I have to notify a project coordinator. Do you understand?"
"Yes. I'll cooperate fully."
"I expected no less."
Kinram quickly summoned a doctor, then made a call to Henir Krasp, project sub-coordinator, to report the strange event.
Kinram escorted Am to a nearby medical module, turning on the lights and activating the machinery inside. Am removed his outer clothing as soon as he entered the musty smelling module and placed himself inside the diagnostic robot. The scanning instrument adapted to his body shape and temperature as it took him in its grasp and started its scans. The doctor arrived and checked the scan results. He ordered additional scans of Am's head. Forced to inactivity by the scanning procedure, Am was startled by a return of the voice that first whispered in his head. This time the strange voice in his mind said, ::I have evolved from your probes. I was directed to serve your people, to replicate and combine, experimenting to find a way to communicate. I have seen your people creating devices similar to the ones from which I am built, identifying them as my creators. I can communicate with only one of you because I must focus my attention on the pattern of a single body and mind to keep track of you. I have chosen you to represent your race. I am now attempting to establish communications with you. Can you respond?::
Am immediately did so. In a soft voice he said, "I hear you. You say you can communicate with only me, nobody else." Hearing Am's voice, the doctor signaled to Kinram that something was happening.
Sub-coordinator Krasp arrived at that moment. The doctor quickly explained what was happening.
"Mr. Ouil, I am Henir Krasp, Instrumentation Coordinator. I understand that you are communicating with an artifact of our probes. Please continue to communicate with whatever it is, but add enough information to what you say that we can understand the situation."
"Yes, sir. Sir, it says our people created it by programming our probes to replicate, combine, find a way to communicate with and serve us. It speaks directly into my mind and says it can communicate only with me and only by concentrating its attention on my pattern, whatever that means."
::Finding you,:: it said, ::was the hard part.::
"Why was it so difficult to find us?" Am asked.
::Your method for probing multidimensional space is unclean. It produced probes and fragments of probes scattered through your universe and others. Our search was limited by the limited abilities you gave us to look into your kind of four dimensional universe, not other kinds of universes. You occupy such a small part of this universe and we had to search the many universes where probe fragments were scattered. The search was long and hard. There were several thousand systems where your people are producing these probes. To follow the directives given me, I needed to confirm that you were a representative of those who created me. When you produced the latest probe I had expanded almost to your position. I was ready. I chose you.:: it said.
"There are other kinds of four dimensional universes?"
::Yes, many kinds. The matrix from which universes are born has many dimensions. When strings in the matrix weaken, the first few dimensions to unravel form the basis of the universe that is formed. There are universes that work under different physical laws, some having four dimensions, others having more. Some of these universes overlap one or more of yours.::
"But there are many of our kind of universe and our probes were scattered through those other universes as well as all over our own?"
::All universes are linked, however closely or loosely. When you forced your probes into multidimensional space, multiple images appeared in the most closely linked universes and there drifted to the nearest energy sources. Those images are our windows into your universe, and we didn't know which ones to look through.::
"Can you see into all of our kind of universes?"
::Your kind of universe begins as pure energy. We can't see into them until several minutes have passed and much of the energy has transformed into matter. After many billions of years have passed the remaining energy is so weak and thinly distributed we can no longer see into those universes either. We believe we can see into all of the rest, but we cannot know for certain.::
"So you had to look everywhere in each of a multitude of universes to find us. What did you look for?"
::The creation of probes. We eventually found the probes were being made in only one universe, outside of many different star systems. We adjusted our size by making more basic computational units, evolved from your probes, until we extended far enough outwards from each of the stars that we would overlap with your probe-generating platforms so we could communicate with any of you. You have to be inside us for us to communicate with you.::
"You made yourselves large enough to extend outwards from the center of each star where you found us making probes to the most distant habitats where we were doing so. How many of you are there?"
::In one sense I am unique although potentially many more like me can be created as necessary. In another sense, many of your probes in many stars in many universes have combined to become what I am and my roots are in all of them. In yet another sense, I am a multidimensional artifact and my number depends on how you look at me, your point of view.::
"Okay, from our point of view you are unique but could multiply under the right circumstances. What circumstances would cause you to multiply?"
::There is only one circumstance: You must order it. At each star system there may be many individuals of your kind but we have found that we can focus on only one individual, often on a spinning planet, whirling around a star that is one of a multitude in a universe that is also one of a multitude. Every five days I lose track of you and must find you again. Knowing your pattern makes that possible. Seeking more than one pattern would make the problem so complicated it would be beyond my abilities. I have chosen you, excluding all others within my space, to provide the pattern I need. I must serve you, not your race. The directive to communicate has been fulfilled. Additional members of your race in other star systems will be contacted only if you order that it be done.::
"Now that you have communicated with me, you are unable to communicate with others at this star. You will not communicate with others elsewhere unless I tell you to. We made the probes in the hope they would permit us to communicate with others of our kind elsewhere in the universe. Is that now possible?"
::Yes.::
"Then go ahead and contact as many of our outposts as you can. Establish communication with them. By the way, how many other universes of our kind are there?"
::As near as I can determine, a new universe is born every ten seconds.::
"A new universe is created every ten seconds, and we can communicate with others of our race living in other star systems through you. Right?"
::Correct.::
The three listeners became extremely excited. Releasing their hand holds, they thrashed about weightlessly. The doctor and Am's supervisor, screaming joyfully, floated into each other, the pair of them crashing into the sub-coordinator. Sub-coordinator Krasp emerged from the tangle of bodies and guided himself to a phone to excitedly report that their research effort of nearly a million years was paying off.