Beyond the Farthest Star: Chapter 11

Noel led Amy and Miles out of the cafeteria and down the long hallway that led to the ZPE room. When they reached the door Noel opened it. “After you!”

“Wait a minute,” Amy said. “Where’s the security?”

“Security?” Noel asked.

“Yeah. Some system to keep everyone and their brother from just walking right into the plant.”

“I don’t understand. Why would we want to do that? No one comes down here unless they work here. I’ve never seen random strangers pop in and start walking around.”

“But what if they did? One crazy person with a gun could easily destroy the ZPE beyond repair. If that happened you wouldn’t have time to do anything about it – this colony would collapse and die. You’re running a real risk by not having any security.”

“She’s right,” Miles commented. “I’d never really thought about it, but we do have some exposure here. We probably should set up some safeguards to restrict this area to authorized personnel.”

“But it’s a waste of resources!” Noel argued. “We’ve never had a problem before.”

“In other words, you’ve been lucky,” Amy replied. “Maybe you’ll be lucky tomorrow, too – or maybe you won’t. Don’t you realize that if one day you’re not lucky then everyone in this colony will die? How hard would it be to put a lock on the door?”

“Way too hard,” Noel replied. “I could never get approval for something like that. The mayor only approves equipment after there’s been a problem, not before. He doesn’t believe in acting preemptively.”

Amy shook her head. “That’s foolish. By then it’s too late.”

“I agree with you,” Miles said. “I understand your point. But you must realize that the colony has much bigger problems than a lack of locks. If significant changes do not happen soon, no one will be alive a hundred years from now.”

“What are you talking about?” Noel asked, as the three of them walked through the door and into the plant.

“It’s the atmosphere. I’ve been monitoring the rate of its dispersal, and the news is not good. A century from now the atmosphere will be so thin that no amount of air towers will be able to help. If you don’t switch to a closed-loop scrubbing system in the next few decades you will all die.”

“Is it really that serious?” Noel asked. “I thought we had a lot more time than that! Do you have any idea how much effort it’s going to take to implement your plan? For starters, the base isn’t even airtight, nor is there a way to use the existing duct work. I’ve gone over your designs, Miles, and it would take a lot of manpower over many years to implement your system. We’re talking ten years, maybe twenty!”

“I know,” Miles replied. “But you don’t have an alternative.”

“We’d better have an alternative, because Thornton would never give his approval to your idea. Never. If that’s our only option then we’re doomed.”

“Why don’t you use the ZPE?” Amy asked. “After all, their original purpose was to terraform planets. They’re designed to create atmospheric gasses.”

“They were?” Noel asked. “I thought they were power plants!”

“No, she’s right,” Miles agreed. “In fact, when Don built this machine he had to hack the plans quite a bit to get it to power the colony. That’s one reason why it’s operating at such low efficiency – it wasn’t designed to be run this way.”

“But how do we fix it?” Noel asked.

“Oh, it’s pretty easy, actually,” Amy said. She closed her eyes and raised a hand, but Miles leaped toward her and grabbed her arm. Amy opened her eyes, startled.

“Sorry,” Miles said. “I just wanted to stop you before you did anything. Whatever you do, don’t fix the problem that way.”

“But why not?” Amy asked.

“Because if you do then they won’t learn anything! The problem here is not that the reactor is old and dying; it’s that the people here have no idea how it works or how to fix it. You need to address the lack of knowledge, not the defective circuitry. That means hands-on craftsmanship.”

“Oh,” Amy said. “So you want me to do this the old-fashioned way?”

“Exactly. Use the parts on-hand to fix the generator, and where necessary use the workshops to craft new parts. Show them how to do it. Don’t do it for them!”

“What are you talking about?” Noel asked. “Don’t you have to use parts to fix it? I mean, how could you possible fix it without parts? Is there some other magical way to do things that I don’t know about?

“Just give me a minute,” Amy said. “I need to think this through.”

Amy looked around the room, using her nanites to study everything carefully. The ZPE was housed in a gigantic room that was nearly a half-mile across and more than a thousand feet deep. The ceiling was eight hundred feet above them. The generator itself took up most of this space, although it was buried beneath a bewildering maze of catwalks, pipes, and wires – all of which were rusty and corroded. The room was brightly lit but poorly organized. At one point the reactor had been painted and clearly labeled, but all of that had peeled off years ago. Now everything was coated in centuries of grime.

“This, um, is really something,” Amy remarked, as she mentally tried to piece together how the machine operated.

“Yes it is!” Noel said proudly. “There she is – the pride and joy of New Tikal. This is the heart that keeps our colony alive.”

“It’s amazing that this ‘heart’ of yours is still beating! The generator is in much worse shape than I thought. It’s going to be a challenge to fix this without gutting it and starting over. It’s suffering from centuries of neglect.”

“Where are you thinking of beginning?” Miles asked.

Amy thought for a moment. “Well, the first step is to increase power production. If we can double efficiency then that will give us the power margin we need to start shutting pieces of the reactor down. We don’t dare take any modules offline until we’re sure that the colony will keep getting the energy it needs.”

“Double efficiency!” Noel exclaimed. “And just how do you propose to do that?”

“Follow me, and I’ll show you,” Amy replied. She walked up to the generator and began climbing a long ladder.

* * * * *
 

Amy spent the next three weeks working with Noel, rebuilding the ZPE. Noel quickly came to respect her brilliance. He was astonished at her detailed working knowledge of the physics behind zero-point energy – a knowledge that went far beyond his own, but one that she freely shared. Her ability to apply that knowledge was equally great. Once Noel realized that she knew what she was doing he was eager to help her. Working together, it only took them four days to reach 63% efficiency.

At that point Miles left, congratulating Amy and telling her that she was free to visit him once she was done. Noel begged him to say, but Miles said that he was too old for that kind of manual labor and was just getting in the way.

Since Amy realized that she was going to be at the colony for some time, she found a room on the top floor of the abandoned apartment building and renovated it, turning it into a cozy home. The broken furnishings were thrown out and replaced with ultramodern furniture that she materialized using her nanites. Amy also started eating all of her meals in her apartment. She vastly preferred waffles, baked beans, and chicken pot pies to the disturbing protein paste that the cafeteria served.

Under Amy’s supervision the ZPE rapidly changed. As the days passed centuries of grime disappeared and coats of paint were applied. Many long-unused pipes were disassembled and other conduits were rerouted. Day by day the output steadily climbed, until finally on December 20th Amy pronounced her work complete. The worn-out girl sat down on a chair on the floor of the generator room and proudly looked up at her work. “That’ll do it, I think” she said.

“It surpasses my wildest expectations,” Noel said. He sat down beside Amy. “We’re operating at 192% efficiency, Amy – 192%! We’re getting almost twice the power output that it was designed to produce. What you’ve done is actually better than what Don Elliott himself did!”

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Amy agreed. “If you’re going to start using it as the colony’s air supply then you’ll need every bit of that power.”

“That’s going to be the tricky part,” Noel said. “We told the mayor what we’ve been working on – we had to, of course. He’s all excited about it and has all sorts of plans. Energy has been this colony’s currency for millennia, and you just increased the amount of available energy by a factor of six. The mayor’s already talking about extensive renovations.”

“Renovations?” Amy asked.

“It’s basically a way to buy votes,” Noel explained. “The mayor’s up for re-election next year and he thinks that if he uses this energy to refurbish people’s homes, they’ll vote for him. This is exactly what he needed. Everyone will have a higher standard of living now and Thornton will take the credit for it. It’s a huge political windfall for him.”

“I don’t really care who takes the credit for it,” Amy said. “You just need to remember that if that surplus energy isn’t turned into oxygen, at some point all of you are going to suffocate. If I were you I would start changing over the colony’s air supply now. You’re going to need all the time you can get.”

“One problem at a time,” Noel said. “Thornton may be out there taking the credit, but the people who work here know who’s really responsible. Word is going to get out. People may vote for him, but no one really trusts him. They know he didn’t personally come down here and redesign the generator’s circuit boards – and when they do start asking questions they’ll discover that you were behind it.”

“That doesn’t matter! You need to focus, Noel. Focus on the air supply. I’m not important. People knowing about me is not important either. The air supply, though, is very important. Focus on that.”

“You’re probably right. Say, you couldn’t lend us a hand with that, could you? I mean–”

Amy shook her head. “Absolutely not. I don’t believe for a minute that you have no idea how to circulate air through the colony or how to scrub out carbon dioxide and other toxins. You and your men are perfectly capable of getting the job done. Besides, the hard part is going to be handling the political problems, and I can’t help you with those.”

“I guess not,” Noel agreed. “So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go see Miles.”

“Well, you’ve certainly earned some time off. All right. I’d be glad to take you in my tank, if you’d like. I don’t know where he lives but–”

“That’s all right,” Amy interrupted. “I can handle it. It’s not a problem.”

“I guess I could loan you my tank,” Noel said reluctantly. “I don’t normally do that, but in this case I’d be willing to make an exception. You are pretty responsible.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary. I don’t need transportation there. I can take care of myself just fine.”

“But how will you get there?” Noel asked, confused.

“Just trust me,” Amy replied.