《Von Neumann》
A new start
My real story starts 2050 with the launch of my personal rocket containing a Von Neumann probe on board.
I was 74 years old at that time and my body had reached its breaking point. Luckily for me there was the technology to digitalize your consciousness already developed some years before with only a small margin of error. I was lucky that it worked without any problems for me.
That wasn''t any cheap adventure as the process costs around 1 million credits, a currency introduced 15 years before when cryptocurrencies overtook national ones as the people had enough of countries fighting economical wars with their favored money system.
The planet would have been much nicer if we didn''t need any currency but humanity would have to evolve much more for that to happen. I had invested my earned money over my life quite good but even then I didn''t have big enough money bags to digitalize my mind.
That changed when I won the european lottery and got more than 250 million credits to my account. What a flash. First I just wanted to go with the flow and go digital and enjoy my life on the world in a computer, playing games and other things but the overall status of the planet went more and more downwards.
Global warming had destroyed most of Afrika, central Asia and large parts of central America. Coastal areas and cities had been flooded with massive migration enlarging regional conflicts into global ones.
Energy production was mostly still with fossil fuels even if some countries had begun to find new ways for getting the industries fueled. Helping that was the advancements of 3D-printers into the first real fabricators using base materials like iron or carbon. It revolutionized everything from food production to machine construction. The only chokepoint was the massive energy needs of even small fabricators.
Fusion reactors were still a thing of the future largely because energy concerns sabotaged every step leading to a working model. Not that anybody officially admitted it but everybody with a working brain was clear about the circumstances of the latest big explosion of a fusion reactor in Australia rendering everything in 50 kilometers radius to slightly radiated dust.
Fortunately that happened in the big desert in the inner part of the continent so the damage was not so big. Controlling the media and influencing social networks threw the development of this technology decades back.
All in all with lots of politicians going more and more nuts I decided to find a way for leaving the planet for good.
Sadly most space programs and companies went down the drain when the powers that be decided to focus all money on maintaining the status quo on Earth and direct all money flows to their own purses. Nothing new there.
So I just had one last space rocket left from SpaceX which tried desperately to find someone buying it. I used some of my money to get the rocket and let it get made stronger for delivering my probe to the sky.
The probe contained two small fabricators, plenty of computing power and memory for my mind, mining equipment for gathering raw materials and the best solar cells that money could buy for outer space.
Risk was high that I would die a final death when I sent my mind into the probe.
I had learned all I could about engineering, physics and chemistry before leaving Earth and my data bases were the best you could get containing the planet''s sciences. Without all the videos of cats, porn and other stuff in the internet the real knowledge was still massive but could get on most state of the art hard drives and I had many of them on board.
When the rocket lifted off I prayed for the second time in my life with all intensity I could muster. There was a real danger that somebody would try to destroy me before I could reach outer space and leave Earth''s weapon reach.
The only thing that happened was that I got thousands of messages from all over the world from people that wished me luck and some of them asked if they possibly could send their own minds someday to me if I survived wherever my path lead me. That felt nice.
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Space was lonely and after deploying my solar cells and getting enough energy for my electromagnetic drive developed back the late NASA I went my way for inner asteroid belt where I wanted to mine some smaller chunks.
The journey would have felt eternal if I hadn''t reduced my awareness down to something resembling sleep for a digital mind.
The first time as a digital was confusing and made me panic but after I had some time adjusting to this new lifestyle it was awesome. My mind worked faster and much more efficient than before and the best thing of all was the missing emotions created by a working hypothalamus. Don''t get me wrong, I still felt things, but much muted, but feelings like desire and lust disappeared along with their biological counterparts. No balls no fantasies about women.
For some people that would have been the loosing of their life essence, for me it was a very much freeing discovery. All the energy and drive I suddenly had an overflow of.
When I neared my destination I awoke from sleep mode and scanned my target. The asteroid was only 200 meters in diameter at the widest and roughly the shape of an potato. My scans showed high iron and silicate amounts so I could use it for building me a better body.
The only problem was the rotation of the asteroid. I would have to stop it somehow and I thought I had the most dangerous part behind me. Surprise, life always finds a way to fuck you sideways.
I studied its movement and magnetic field and realized that maybe I could use my own mass to lock its movement to my own. Surely, it would take some time to accomplish but that was something I had in overabundance. I would still need some help to accomplish that.
Earth hadn''t changed much in my time away. Most of the old politicians still betrayed their purpose and wars ravaged many parts of the planet. No relevant new technologies for me to use but I got plenty of questions from all around the planet asking me how my journey went.
Mostly the questions originated from hobby astronomers but some were from kids. No clue how they got hold of my contact. I only had a small communication device installed on Earth to still let me connect with the Internet. Quantum communication is something that was around for 10 years now and didn''t want to totally loose contact with my former home. My parents were long dead and my older brother too but my younger sister was still kicking even if she got slower over time. Her tongue was still sharp as ever much to her kids indisposition. My niece and nephew lived in a world derived of any bright future but still fought on knowing that there was mostly only one way the place could go.
I hoped I was able to do something for them out here. Maybe I would be able to transfer their minds too after I had build myself my first real spaceship. Not that there was much money left for their own digitalization but what was left I had transferred to their accounts. If I was able to get somehow some pricey materials back to Earth there was perhaps a chance to slow the final clash of the main powers on the cradle of humanity.
That were noble dreams for now because first there was this chunk of space garbage to stop. I still had some connections to some guys from the late NASA and ESA and tried to open a channel with one of them. Unfortunately I had to try more than 10 people before I got an answer.
Old Henry Gallagher from ESA connected with me. He was a former exo-geologist so I had a good chance that he was able to help me with my problem.
¡°I can''t believe it. You''re still in one piece out there.¡±
¡°Yep, space was good to me. No space junk or minor hits from anything on the way and now I stopped at a small asteroid and ain''t sure how to stop its rotation.¡±
He nodded and frowned, ¡°You could stop it with your own mass but you''d have to fly all around the sucker and it could take years. How big is the thing?¡±
I sent him my telemetry data and after a moment he became excited.
¡°That''s the best data I got since ages. Thanks man. Even just looking at the overall state of things I would say that you''re looking at at least 9 months of slowing the sucker down. And that''s only after you have studied its magnetic field closely enough to anchor your position.¡±
I sighed. Nothing''s easy out here.
¡°You don''t know an easier way, don''t you?¡±
¡°Easier maybe but surely much more dangerous for you.¡±
¡°Out with it, give me some alternatives.¡±
¡°You could find a relatively still place and touch down there but I fear that would also hurt your energy production with your solar panels.¡±
¡°Okay that is out of questions. Fuck, nine months just for slowing it down, maybe I should search for another chunk of stone.¡±
My friend just chuckled, ¡°I wish you luck with that. Chance is that most of them, if not all, have a stronger rotation that that one. Did you give it a name?¡±
¡°Haha, why should I? When I''m done with that block there will nothing left over but dust on its way to the sun.¡±
¡°Right, I forgot that you''re now the equivalent to a vacuum cleaner out there, pun intended.¡±
¡°You''re still such a jester, you know.¡±
¡°Yeah, but I''m happy to hear from you. Our small community wasn''t sure if you''d make the journey. Also you should better fortify your network against any attacks from other digitized. The situation down here goes fast down the gutter.¡±
I became serious again, ¡°It''s so bad?¡±
¡°I wished it wasn''t but lately the Russians and Chinese started to fight over parts of siberia because with global warming and flooding of good farming land the cold land has become a much better farming ground than before.¡±
¡°Hm, and there''s only one way that could end with two stubborn oxes fighting. Fuck I didn''t think my fears would happen so fast.¡±
¡°For now I think they will use only conventional warfare but I and friends of mine have begun to dig our own bunker.¡±
¡°One way to survive. If everythings fails I''ll send you the coordinates of my quantum link so you can take it with you to your bunker. Maybe I can help you in the future then with my ressources.¡±
¡°Dark times ahead, my friend. The idiots will fight some years hopefully before the show goes down so you should be able to get your own problem handled and build a new home for yourself and perhaps some lucky suckers out there.¡±
¡°I''ll do my best. Please send me your computations for the best place to stop that sucker here and I''ll start my work.¡±
¡°You''ll have them as soon as possible. Henry out.¡±
The connection ended and I was left thinking.
I''d have to strenghten my cyber defenses for now. This was my home and anybody trying a stunt here would get his ass beaten to Mars and back.
Plans are formulated
Cyber defenses for digitals were nothing other than empowered firewalls with semi-intelligent code created by the digital''s mind. Something like the immune system of biologicals, only with the difference that a digital could empower and develop its own system.
I was no hacker but you don''t become a digital without learning to do some code. So while I waited for Henry to do his work I enhanced my systems. I would still have to study programming some more to better my chances against a dedicated attack but for now it was enough.
I opened a homepage on a google server and made myself some databases for the purpose of dumb-loading my scans of the asteroid and other potentially interesting space data in them. For a small fee everybody could now access them and would be able to work with them. This way I was able to get some money and perhaps enhance the chance for others of my family to upload themselves.
That took some time as I wanted the homepage to be sophisticated and cool looking. The complete package should be a statement of professional work and efficiency. I hated the way currently things in the internet were programmed. Just because you have almost unlimited data volumes at your disposal you shouldn''t just program sloppy.
It took almost ten hours until Henry called back.
¡°Hey there. I talked with some guys about the project and got a link to your new homepage too. Nice work there. They all wanted in on the work. There are more desperate space geeks on this planet than you would think after governments killed all inspiration to go to the space and the death of Evan Musk in the 30''.¡±
¡°Yeah, I hoped he would be the guy to step a foot on mars first with his company. After him and his ideas nobody came close anymore.¡±
¡°A real shame for humanity, but back to why I called. We have found the best strategy for your asteroid. Some guy from NASA is a real geek in finding the best fly routes for things and found a way to make the time for stopping the chunk go down significantly. If you follow the instructions closely you might be able to stop the rotation in less than 4 months.¡±
¡°Wow, that''s quite the improvement.¡±
¡°Yeah and all he wants for this is complete access to your homepage without paying.¡±
¡°He can have that but he has to pledge to make no profits from that or share them equally with me.¡±
¡°That shouldn''t be a problem at all. I''ll give you his contact data and also that of the others on the project. They want all in. You got your own space agency at your disposal. Admitted we''re mostly old geezers but we got the spirit.¡±
¡°You''re more than welcome. While we speak I''ve made the first course corrections and began the maneuver. So in 4 months I can begin with dismantling this chunk of materials and make myself a proper spaceship.¡±
¡°Would you like some input from us for construction?¡±
¡°It wouldn''t hurt but please keep in mind that life support isn''t necessary for me. Redundancy in contrast is. I''ll open a construction page on the homepage too for the spaceship but it won''t be an actual plan for my own ship but maybe we can get some inspiration from that.¡±
¡°You''re nuts you know that? Every space geek and bored engineer will flock to the page and try to add his personal touch.¡±
¡°I know and this way we can find the best configuration for future components. Imagine all the creative power gathered in that.¡±Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
¡°You''ll have to upgrade the processing power and bandwidth for your page two or better three iterations.¡±
¡°Yeah and that will cost money but with a monthly subscription fee of modest 2 credits per person that should state no problem at all.¡±
¡°Haha, getting rich with space geeks and sucking their brains at the same time. I knew you were an old sly fox but that is a new dimension.¡±
I was amused myself about the slyness of my plan.
¡°It''s their own volition that helps me and satisfies a deep desire for them. I just use an old dream for my own purpose. A dream given up by our governments, may they rot in all eternity.¡±
¡°Yep. I''ll take my own chances on adding my touch. Just get a good construction program for the homepage and you''re golden. Henry out.¡±
His old-style communication made me laugh but he was just a creature of habit. He still was right about the program and the bandwidth problems. I took a look at the homepage and was flabbergasted at the number of people that had already flocked to it. Over 1000 users were registered and downloaded my scans with some of them questioning for some space pictures of Jupiter and Mars when they came into range of my equipment.
That would make me some decent money too so I added that to the things that needed done. I''d have to upgrade my cameras and deep space scanners until I began my mining operation.
I searched the net for any good design programs and took my time in finding the best. My money was unfortunately nowhere near the amount the price of it. What private person was able to buy the thing for more than 1 million credits?
I''d have to do it myself then and program the sucker the hard way. As benefit I''d be able to better my skills and I was sure that my community would have to add their own kinks to it.
You might think that a digital mind would be able to program such a program in no time and if you wanted a sloppy job you might be right but I wanted a real beauty of a design program with all the kinks added. No DLC here or there to add it everywhere. I''d have to make sure that is was only used for my personal projects so I didn''t get into any problems with other digitals out there. So the program would have to be completely online and only accessible when in connection with the homepage.
The price for my homepage would go through the roof.
For now I increased the bandwidth and the volume of the data base. Google would become even richer with me. Not that the google dynasty didn''t already rule over most of the net. Most of the largest stock holders were already digitals and had almost unlimited amounts of money at their disposal. Obscene amounts of it. For which purpose to gather that much money without really using it made no sense to me but hey, I was just an old geezer who had some luck and a dream to fulfill.
While a part of my mind was busy with the maneuver and keeping my solar panels as long as possible in the energetic solar rays, the rest of me began the work on the design program. My best guess would be a duration of 2 or 3 months of permanent working on the thing with implementing the additions of my future workforce.
Thousands of people working on space equipment would be awesome, and all of it would be for free.
I added the contacts of Henry to the homepage and gave them full access to my data and didn''t charge them any costs. They would be the core of my development team for space equipment. Hopefully some of them had experiences in Human Resources. I didn''t want to deal with thousands of eager space engineers.
I think there was a game someday that had the same name. I always wanted to play it but there was constantly another game that interested me more. Yeah, I was a vivid gamer in my biological days.
If my skills in programming got much better I could perhaps code my own game. I already had a vision of it but all of that would have to wait for quite some time.
The next month went by much faster than I''d had thought. The homepage took off like predicted and my first version of the design program was a solid start for the would-be space engineers, but man did they have demands for changes. Half of the times I was tempted to just kick the whole thing into the bucket and end my suffering by closing the connection to Earth but Henry and the others became friends over time.
Russia and China had intensified their war and thousands had died fighting over land that was a combat zone now. The idiots destroyed the thing they were fighting over. Typical politicians.
Not that the politicians were the ones to guide the conflict. The pyramid of society was still in power. Governments were just much farther down it than in the 20th century. Nowadays elite families like the Rockefellers or Rotschilds ruled the planet by directing stock markets and ordering central banks all over the world. After Russia had succumbed to capitalism and decades later China they took the last strongholds of governments and stepped into their position using the old systems to rule over the masses. Money ruled the world and they were money.
The problem was that in the last 10 years the families began to fight with each other where before they worked together to solidify their power. Now with their unbreakable choke-hold over the planet they could afford infighting. At least they thought that.
For someone like me it was borderline stupid to do that. I had to admit that their rise to power stopped humanity from wiping itself out with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons but lately with the possibility of digitalization the powers that be seemed to have decided they could afford to loose some millions or even billions of human lives. With more than 10 billions humans crawling over the plagued planet I had to admit that the loss of half of them wouldn''t hurt the system much.
I was sure that when the families realized that they sunk their ship the rats would try to board mine or build their owns. I could stop them with better firewalls or just cutting the connection to the net but if the tried to build their own arcs I would have to stop them. No way would I leave them my new playground to do their old business again.
Oh no, if they wanted to play with humanity they would do it only on Earth and die with it when they killed it.
Touchdown and deals
Cyber defenses for digitals were nothing other than empowered firewalls with semi-intelligent code created by the digital''s mind. Something like the immune system of biologicals, only with the difference that a digital could empower and develop its own system.
I was no hacker but you don''t become a digital without learning to do some code. So while I waited for Henry to do his work I enhanced my systems. I would still have to study programming some more to better my chances against a dedicated attack but for now it was enough.
I opened a homepage on a google server and made myself some databases for the purpose of dumb-loading my scans of the asteroid and other potentially interesting space data in them. For a small fee everybody could now access them and would be able to work with them. This way I was able to get some money and perhaps enhance the chance for others of my family to upload themselves.
That took some time as I wanted the homepage to be sophisticated and cool looking. The complete package should be a statement of professional work and efficiency. I hated the way currently things in the internet were programmed. Just because you have almost unlimited data volumes at your disposal you shouldn''t just program sloppy.
It took almost ten hours until Henry called back.
¡°Hey there. I talked with some guys about the project and got a link to your new homepage too. Nice work there. They all wanted in on the work. There are more desperate space geeks on this planet than you would think after governments killed all inspiration to go to the space and the death of Evan Musk in the 30''.¡±
¡°Yeah, I hoped he would be the guy to step a foot on mars first with his company. After him and his ideas nobody came close anymore.¡±
¡°A real shame for humanity, but back to why I called. We have found the best strategy for your asteroid. Some guy from NASA is a real geek in finding the best fly routes for things and found a way to make the time for stopping the chunk go down significantly. If you follow the instructions closely you might be able to stop the rotation in less than 4 months.¡±
¡°Wow, that''s quite the improvement.¡±
¡°Yeah and all he wants for this is complete access to your homepage without paying.¡±
¡°He can have that but he has to pledge to make no profits from that or share them equally with me.¡±
¡°That shouldn''t be a problem at all. I''ll give you his contact data and also that of the others on the project. They want all in. You got your own space agency at your disposal. Admitted we''re mostly old geezers but we got the spirit.¡±
¡°You''re more than welcome. While we speak I''ve made the first course corrections and began the maneuver. So in 4 months I can begin with dismantling this chunk of materials and make myself a proper spaceship.¡±
¡°Would you like some input from us for construction?¡±
¡°It wouldn''t hurt but please keep in mind that life support isn''t necessary for me. Redundancy in contrast is. I''ll open a construction page on the homepage too for the spaceship but it won''t be an actual plan for my own ship but maybe we can get some inspiration from that.¡±
¡°You''re nuts you know that? Every space geek and bored engineer will flock to the page and try to add his personal touch.¡±
¡°I know and this way we can find the best configuration for future components. Imagine all the creative power gathered in that.¡±
¡°You''ll have to upgrade the processing power and bandwidth for your page two or better three iterations.¡±
¡°Yeah and that will cost money but with a monthly subscription fee of modest 2 credits per person that should state no problem at all.¡±
¡°Haha, getting rich with space geeks and sucking their brains at the same time. I knew you were an old sly fox but that is a new dimension.¡±
I was amused myself about the slyness of my plan.
¡°It''s their own volition that helps me and satisfies a deep desire for them. I just use an old dream for my own purpose. A dream given up by our governments, may they rot in all eternity.¡±
¡°Yep. I''ll take my own chances on adding my touch. Just get a good construction program for the homepage and you''re golden. Henry out.¡±
His old-style communication made me laugh but he was just a creature of habit. He still was right about the program and the bandwidth problems. I took a look at the homepage and was flabbergasted at the number of people that had already flocked to it. Over 1000 users were registered and downloaded my scans with some of them questioning for some space pictures of Jupiter and Mars when they came into range of my equipment.
That would make me some decent money too so I added that to the things that needed done. I''d have to upgrade my cameras and deep space scanners until I began my mining operation.
I searched the net for any good design programs and took my time in finding the best. My money was unfortunately nowhere near the amount the price of it. What private person was able to buy the thing for more than 1 million credits?
I''d have to do it myself then and program the sucker the hard way. As benefit I''d be able to better my skills and I was sure that my community would have to add their own kinks to it.
You might think that a digital mind would be able to program such a program in no time and if you wanted a sloppy job you might be right but I wanted a real beauty of a design program with all the kinks added. No DLC here or there to add it everywhere. I''d have to make sure that is was only used for my personal projects so I didn''t get into any problems with other digitals out there. So the program would have to be completely online and only accessible when in connection with the homepage.
The price for my homepage would go through the roof.
For now I increased the bandwidth and the volume of the data base. Google would become even richer with me. Not that the google dynasty didn''t already rule over most of the net. Most of the largest stock holders were already digitals and had almost unlimited amounts of money at their disposal. Obscene amounts of it. For which purpose to gather that much money without really using it made no sense to me but hey, I was just an old geezer who had some luck and a dream to fulfill.
While a part of my mind was busy with the maneuver and keeping my solar panels as long as possible in the energetic solar rays, the rest of me began the work on the design program. My best guess would be a duration of 2 or 3 months of permanent working on the thing with implementing the additions of my future workforce.
Thousands of people working on space equipment would be awesome, and all of it would be for free.
I added the contacts of Henry to the homepage and gave them full access to my data and didn''t charge them any costs. They would be the core of my development team for space equipment. Hopefully some of them had experiences in Human Resources. I didn''t want to deal with thousands of eager space engineers.
I think there was a game someday that had the same name. I always wanted to play it but there was constantly another game that interested me more. Yeah, I was a vivid gamer in my biological days.
If my skills in programming got much better I could perhaps code my own game. I already had a vision of it but all of that would have to wait for quite some time.
The next month went by much faster than I''d had thought. The homepage took off like predicted and my first version of the design program was a solid start for the would-be space engineers, but man did they have demands for changes. Half of the times I was tempted to just kick the whole thing into the bucket and end my suffering by closing the connection to Earth but Henry and the others became friends over time.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Russia and China had intensified their war and thousands had died fighting over land that was a combat zone now. The idiots destroyed the thing they were fighting over. Typical politicians.
Not that the politicians were the ones to guide the conflict. The pyramid of society was still in power. Governments were just much farther down it than in the 20th century. Nowadays elite families like the Rockefellers or Rotschilds ruled the planet by directing stock markets and ordering central banks all over the world. After Russia had succumbed to capitalism and decades later China they took the last strongholds of governments and stepped into their position using the old systems to rule over the masses. Money ruled the world and they were money.
The problem was that in the last 10 years the families began to fight with each other where before they worked together to solidify their power. Now with their unbreakable choke-hold over the planet they could afford infighting. At least they thought that.
For someone like me it was borderline stupid to do that. I had to admit that their rise to power stopped humanity from wiping itself out with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons but lately with the possibility of digitalization the powers that be seemed to have decided they could afford to loose some millions or even billions of human lives. With more than 10 billions humans crawling over the plagued planet I had to admit that the loss of half of them wouldn''t hurt the system much.
I was sure that when the families realized that they sunk their ship the rats would try to board mine or build their owns. I could stop them with better firewalls or just cutting the connection to the net but if the tried to build their own arcs I would have to stop them. No way would I leave them my new playground to do their old business again.
Oh no, if they wanted to play with humanity they would do it only on Earth and die with it when they killed it.
I''d have to build combat ships with enough firepower to withstand any attack from the planet and still get close enough to destroy anything build in a close orbit. Luckily for me any laser weapons trying to reach outer space would be seriously weakened by the atmosphere. So I mostly had to worry about kinetic weapons like rockets and strong mass drivers.
Rockets were easy to defend against from space but mass drivers could be a problem the first time they fired. After that I could just drop some chunk from the orbit and level the ground. Nothing beats a ton of solid iron with 10 to 20 kilometers per second.
There was a good chance that I''d become the boogeyman of the planet when I decided to stop any tries to flee Earth after the elite families fucked my homeworld over. So be it. You had to smash eggs to make a pancake. Getting rid of these guys would do humanity a solid.
Everything coming in the future would still be futile if I didn''t get my own problems here solved.
The asteroid had begun to slow down its rotation and could already see establishing a kind of axis around the whole thing rotated. If I could establish it faster I maybe wouldn''t need to slow down the whole thing to a stop. I could just rotate myself to the same speed and stick to on of the poles.
¡°Henry, I got a question for our space jockey.¡±
After some minutes waiting for him to answer my call the former space agency employee called back, ¡°You should take a look at the time zone, my friend. It''s fucking 2 am here right now and slept like a log when your goddamn call woke me and my wife. She got very creative for the names she called you.¡±
Oops, he was right.
¡°Sorry, please send her my sincerest regards. I had an idea and wanted to check it with you.¡±
¡°If it involves Jack then why not just call him directly?¡±
¡°He should be at work right now.¡±
¡°Interesting. You know when not to knock on others door but my own is always open?¡±
I might have better been silent with my last remark.
¡°I''m really sorry mate. I''ll check the time and schedule in the future before calling you.¡±
¡°You better. Just send me the details and I''ll give them to Jack after my breakfast.¡±
¡°If I''m right we could be accelerating the plan for months and I could start with creating new mind cores if the asteroid has any of the needed elements.¡±
¡°That would be awesome, my friend but for now, just let me sleep.¡±
¡°Good night, Henry.¡±
He didn''t answer back, just closed the connection. He must be somewhat pissed. My digital mind lately showed tendencies to forget biological needs. Nothing surprising but if I wanted to carry on working with biologicals I would do good to remember their needs.
One of my goals was to create new digital cores for my most trusted aids. Henry belonged to them but some others from the team too and regarding the fast detoriating status of Earth''s political scene I''d have my work cut out for me.
I waited some hours and worked on beefing up my personal defenses. At least Jack responded back to me. He was a middle aged asian from India who lost his job when India dumped its space program for creating more food for its ever growing population.
Even with some devastating diseases killing millions in the last 30 years mankind had reached a point where the loss of 100 million people didn''t make a big dent in the yearly population growth.
¡°Hey cyber brain, how''s it going up there?¡±
I hated it when he called me that, ¡°It''s a nice sunny place over here. Great view, no idiot politicians and no war in the vicinity.¡±
¡°You don''t know how jealous I''m right now. The situation down here goes fast down the drain. Heck, if anybody could just put a bullet to the people at the top most of humanity would praise the shooter like a hero.¡±
¡°I understand but right now I need your expertise with my plan.¡±
¡°You wanted to create a stable axis for the asteroid to turn around if I got the mail right.¡±
¡°Yes, I noticed that the chunk of stone began to develop a kind of stable rotation and wanted to know if I could accelerate the process and then attach myself at the top or downside of my asteroid.¡±
¡°I calculated the whole thing but to be honest I''m not sure if your body would survive the continual rotational forces.¡±
¡°I could survive it for some time. My structure is more durable than most people would think and as soon as I have a touchdown I can detach my EM-drive to install it on the surface of the asteroid for a better deceleration.¡±
He nodded and frowned for a moment,¡±Sound''s good and I can tell you exactly where to place the drive. That would easily reduce the time for the mining operation and the overall project. Give me some hours and I''ll give you the details. Jack over.¡±
He was a competent man and only 2 hours later I had the necessary data. So I began the new maneuver. I was delighted about the time saving. My body was durable but the sooner I was able to produce spare parts and new enhancements the better I''d feel.
Two weeks later it was time for my touchdown on the asteroid. I sent the whole video live to Earth and my followers were eager to watch. With more than 100000 people watching I felt some pressure to perform at my best.
My descent was quite slow with less than 10 centimeters per minute so I just begun the video when I was only 10 meters away from my target. My own rotation was exactly the same as the asteroid and I watched every structural sensor with eagle''s eyes. If my solar panels were damaged this could be my possible death out here so I was near panic and almost decided to abandon the plan and get back to my former maneuver plan.
Lastly it was the thought about my family back home that let me take the risk. The fighting on Earth had gotten worse over the time and threatened to expand to more nations. The European union still tried to get the Russians and China back to the diplomatic table but with every spent day the chances went down.
So I went through with the plan. I watched the distance closely and decelerated to less than 1 centimeter per minute when I was at the last meter. My watchers were at the backseat right now. If it took a whole day to get it right it would.
More than an hour later my body touched down on the asteroid and sank deeper into the soft surface of accumulated dust. My mining equipment already sucked in the dust and turned it to slug with which I began to fortify my position on the harder parts further down.
Stone wasn''t the best material for building a solid foundation but right now it was the best I had. My drones sucked everything near my body into my fabricators and I had to direct most of my energy into them. With my touchdown I could deactivate my drive for now and the energy was needed desperately. My two building drones began to detach the furthest solar panels from my body and installed them directly on the asteroid.
This way I could reduce the rotational strain on my structure. Over the next hours my energy production was installed directly on the asteroid which reduced the pressure on my nerves. I got lots of congratulations from my watchers and also an unexpected chat.
¡°Hey Marcus! This is Lea Krupp. I think you know who I am and who I represent.¡±
I really had hoped that the big families wouldn''t try to contact me before I had built my first spaceship.
¡°Hello Ms Krupp, what can I do for you?¡±
Like me she was a digital and I was doing my best to control every byte she sent me, but for now there seemed to be no malware.
¡°To keep it short, my family wants on your future ship. With the other families starting to fight each other we have decided that a more remote place for us would be favorable.¡±
¡°I get that but to be blunt I have no love for the big families. You fucked Earth over so much all I truly want is to get my friends and family of the planet and let you do your own thing down there.¡±
She kept silent for a moment, ¡°I can understand your position but my family always tried to counterbalance the other''s eagerness to destroy everything in their way. You know that I''m right.¡±
I had to admit that the Krupps always seemed to be a conservative power but you don''t become a major family without breaking morals and bodies left and right.
¡°You''re better than the rest but that doesn''t give you any plus points with me. I didn''t leave the planet behind with its politics and backstabbing to just get one of the better bastards on my ship. I''m sure that the moment I lessen my attention on you guys all of you would attack me and take over.¡±
She was nonplussed about my direct words, that was obvious.
¡°You know that we have the power to make your friends and family disappear without anyone asking questions?¡±
¡°I do and you should know that I just have to deactivate my quantum connection, construct my ship, fly back to Earth and bomb the place? If I just hurl this asteroid in one of the oceans most life on Earth would end fast. After that all I had to do would be scanning the planet and destroy any left electronic activity to get all of your sorry asses, so stop threatening me.¡±
¡°We could just build our own ships to get of the planet.¡±
I just had to laugh, ¡°Haha, with what rockets? Even if you started right now to reconstruct the assembly buildings for the rockets and probes, I''d still have enough time to build some countermeasures and nuke your starting ships from orbit.¡±
She was really mad right now. It seemed she wasn''t accustomed to being turned down.
¡°This talk went in the complete wrong direction.¡±
¡°That''s right.¡±
¡°Let me restart the discussion. My family wants to get off the world but we offer our own power to first digitalize your friends and family and then follow you to the stars. We will create deep bunkers with independent power supply in case of a world-wide war and keep the minds of all of them safe from destruction.¡±
Now that was an interesting offer.
¡°What would keep you from just threatening me to give you what you want when you have them in your custody?¡±
¡°All the safe places will be directly under your control. We will download our own minds to the places and will trust you to keep your part of the deal.¡±
I could clearly see her anger about being in the position of a petitioner. It must have costed her much to give me that offer.
¡°I''ll consider your offer and talk with my advisers but keep in mind that I''ll still accelerate my construction of the ship and getting back to Earth. I won''t let anyone into orbit without my permission. I''ll hold the high ground against anyone trying.¡±
¡°As long as you''ll keep your part of the deal we''ll keep ours. Do you know if you''ll be able to create the crystals for all the digitalized minds from the materials you gather on the asteroid?¡±
¡°I''m quite positive that the asteroid holds all the needed materials for at least a thousand crystals. If you can slow down the other families from getting to space I''ll try to create some mother ships to mine more asteroids and build a bigger space station for safekeeping all digitalized minds.¡±
Lea answered not immediately and took some moments. I guessed that she communicated with other family members.
¡°We are happy to do business with you. Please keep a connection going with us to keep in touch.¡±
And with that she ended the connection and I knew I just had made a deal with the devil.