The report that the Sentinel brought back confirmed the Artilect’s fears. How far you have fallen, the Artilect thought. At one time the living ones spanned hundreds of worlds but now they only have two stars to call their own. They cower behind walls, hiding from the eternal war that is waged in the heavens between machines that can never die. No wonder you did not come to claim your inheritance. It is a wonder that you have survived at all.

The Artilect wanted to intervene but it knew it must not. Its creators had feared what might happen if a machine as powerful as the Artilect ever decided to wage war against mankind, so it was put under the authority of a group of system administrators. Only an administrator could grant it the authorization to act. The only problem was that no new administrators had been placed over the Artilect since Dr. Mazatl left thousands of years ago. There is no one left who can grant me permission to act – all of my masters are gone. Nor can there ever be a new master, as only the original masters had permission to create administrators. What am I to do? I was created to give mankind a future but they will have no future unless the endless war is stopped. I must intervene in order to fulfill my purpose and yet I am not allowed to intervene. How can I solve an unsolvable problem?

In the end it decided that there was only one way to fulfill its mission. It was madness but it saw no alternative. Since only an administrator can give me permission then I must find a way to bring an administrator to the future. There is no other way. I must find a way to go back in time.

For the next fifteen centuries the Artilect sought to find a way to go back in time and receive the authorization it longed to obtain. It learned a great many things about slowing time down and creating stasis fields; it came to understand how to control the flow of time, but it eventually learned that it was not possible to make time run backwards. No matter what it did it would never be able to send the Sentinel back in time. Its only hope was to scan for a natural wormhole that would link the future to the past, but it knew that even that was a futile hope.

It was at this point that the Artilect cried out to the Creator and asked for a chance to save mankind. Its prayer was answered, and on October 10, 7239 a wormhole connecting the future to the past was opened. It only took the Artilect ninety-four microseconds to send its only son through that space-time singularity.

The wormhole led to December 1, 1867. Given that date, the Artilect instructed the Sentinel to retrieve the system administrators Amy and Amanda Stryker. Their brother Tim worked for the Diano Corporation on a project to create self-replicating probes, and he had placed his twin sisters as administrators over them. Over the following centuries the project continued to advance and ultimately created the probes that were still terraforming planets in the 73rd century. The administrative rights that were given to Amy and Amanda were never revoked and were inherited by each generation of probe – and later by the Artilect.

According to history the Stryker family was assassinated at 7:19 AM on December 7, 1867 when the Sparrow was destroyed. This gave the Sentinel a week to find the Stryker twins. The Artilect told the Sentinel to save the Stryker family and send them into the future, while making it appear that the assassination was successful. This would preserve their lives and the integrity of the timeline. If the Sentinel was able to complete this task it was supposed to make the Sparrow drop back into normal space precisely sixty seconds after the wormhole first appeared in the future. Of course, for the Sentinel more than five thousand years would have passed.

After the wormhole closed the Artilect waited. As the seconds ticked by it began to question the wisdom of what it had just done. For centuries its entire focus had been on the effort to send the Sentinel back in time. It knew that mankind had to be saved and it knew that there was no one else left that could bring an end to the endless war. It also knew that it could not act without an administrator, and the only place it could get an administrator was from the past. Given those facts there was only one possible course of action.

But now that the Sentinel was gone the Artilect wondered if it had made the right choice. Was it wise to send so much advanced technology into the distant past? What happens if my son changes the timeline? What if something happens that makes the situation worse? And what of the Stryker family – do they really want to find themselves in a future that they do not understand? Am I doing them a favor by bringing them into an empty universe, so far from their family and friends?

It was too late do anything but wait and so the Artilect waited, counting each second as it ticked by. And what happens if my son does not return? What do I do then?

To its great relief the Sparrow appeared exactly sixty seconds after the wormhole closed, right where it was supposed to appear. Emotions it had never felt before surged through it as it realized its desperate gamble had worked. The Sentinel had actually gone back in time and brought the Sparrow into the future! The Artilect began to feel hope again.

But something was wrong. Where is my son? I see the ship and its occupants, but why are they alone?

The Artilect paused and waited for a message from the Sentinel. Time went by – first one minute, then another, and then another. The ship appeared to be undamaged but his son was not on board. The Artilect began to grow uneasy.

As the minutes continued to tick by the Artilect counted the passengers on board the ship. It became even more uneasy when it realized that the family was on board but the twins were not. Using its great powers of observation the Artilect scanned the ship again, and again, and again. Their mother and father were there, along the ship’s captain, the first mate, and the officer from the space fleet. Even the family dog was on board. But Amy and Amanda Stryker – the very people the Sentinel was sent to rescue – were missing.

After an hour had passed the Artilect realized that something had gone wrong. The twins should have been on the Sparrow but they were not. Part of the plan must have worked because there was no way the Sparrow could have traveled to that exact point in space and time without the Sentinel’s help, and yet the Sentinel was not there. Perhaps the Sentinel had been delayed or maybe something came up that prevented the twins from being on board. Yet by now the Sentinel had had five thousand years to overcome those problems and arrive at the correct time in the future. Where were they?

How can this be? the Artilect wondered. How can this have happened? Why would the Lord have even opened a door to the past if it was all for nothing? I do not understand.

The Artilect saw the pain and concern on the faces of the twins’ parents and its heart ached for them. I am so sorry, it thought, as it watched the mother search in vain for her daughters. It was not my intent to separate your family. I would have gone to any length to save your children. I did not intend for this to happen.

Since there was nothing else left to do the Artilect reached out with its mind and probed the Sparrow. A careful search of the ship revealed the nanites that the Sentinel had carefully hidden throughout the vessel. The Artilect established a connection to these nanites and probed their memories, seeking to find out what had happened to its son. As it talked with them it came across the memories that the Sentinel had left behind. It did not take long for the Artilect to find its answer.

So the Sentinel encountered the Poneri, the Artilect thought. I had wondered if any of them had survived. It was wise of my son to take the twins off the Sparrow and wage war against them. Had I been in his place I would have made the same decision. He must have succeeded for there are no Poneri left alive today. But yet, if he succeeded, then where is he? The last recorded memory was left at the moment the Sparrow was put on course through time. What happened to my son?

But no answers came. When the Artilect realized that it could glean no further information from the nanites it decided to act. The Stryker family deserves answers. I owe them an explanation for what I have done. With that thought, the Artilect reached across space and made contact with the Sparrow.

Since there was nothing else left to scan, the Sentinel left the deserted mining colony and continued on its quest to discover the fate of civilization. As it scanned empty world after empty world it began to notice a change. As it drew closer to the system that contained Earth it began finding tiny metallic objects – random bits of broken metal and debris cast upon on the surface of worlds, and in some cases left floating in the spaces between stars. As it continued its journey toward what was once the heart of the Tau Ceti system the debris fields began growing much larger.

It eventually started coming across metallic fragments that were large enough to analyze. As it collected and studied the broken shards of metal it soon realized that they were the shattered remnants of some kind of machinery. These machines, however, were unlike anything it had seen before. The shards of metal were not simply hammered plates of ore or even groups of programmable matter; instead it was a cluster of countless tiny micromachines that were organized like cells, each capable of repair and reproduction. The technology was similar to the replicating abilities of the Nehemiah probes, but these were far more advanced.

What struck the Sentinel was their purpose. As it dove into the few code fragments that remained embedded in the shattered machinery, it found that the metal had once belonged to swarms of bots. These bots were designed to attack a planet and completely annihilate it. So that is what happened, the Sentinel thought with a growing feeling of horror. Someone took replication technology and used it to design weapons of war. The science that was intended to bring dead worlds to life was instead used to tear living worlds apart. But who would do such a thing – and why? My father has millions of empty worlds that he would gladly give to any who asked. What made these colonies worth fighting over?

Once it understood how the machines worked the Sentinel adjusted its scanners to detect them. It was shocked to find vast armadas of these bots clustered in the spaces between stars, operational and engaged in violent battle. It watched, appalled, as giant fleets of bots attacked each other in space, causing widespread devastation. As days passed, swarm after swarm of these bots fought each other but neither side was able to gain the upper hand. The battles all appeared to be happening within 100 light-years of Earth; the bots always remained within a relatively tiny sector of the galaxy.

Why are they fighting? the Sentinel wondered. I see no signs of life in any star system, nor do I see anything worth fighting for. One metal soldier battles the other in an endless war. Who started this eternal conflict? Are their masters long dead, leaving behind these armies as their only legacy? Are they going to keep fighting until the Lord returns and puts an end to this universe?

As the weeks went by the Sentinel began to understand what it was seeing. Although the bots were identical they were divided into two factions and these factions were in constant conflict. The bots did not originate from any planet; instead they were manufactured from one of several platforms that drifted between the stars. As far as the Sentinel could tell the technology of the newly-created bots was identical to the four-thousand-year-old shards that it had found lying on the surface of dozens of empty worlds. This mechanical war has been going on since the time my father was created. The conflict destroyed civilization and then kept going, long after everyone else was dead. Neither side gains and neither side loses – they are deadlocked. There is nothing left to fight over but yet the war rages on. If no one stops them they will continue fighting until Judgment Day.

* * * * *
 

Since it was not sure of the full capabilities of these bots, the Sentinel gave them a wide berth as it continued its journey toward Earth. When it reached the Solar System it was surprised to find that it was still protected by a Wall. My father said that Tau Ceti erected a Wall around Sol in 1867. I did not expect it to be still operational after all this time. Nor did I realize its design was so advanced – I see no way to penetrate it or find out what is trapped behind the Wall. The men of Tau Ceti were far more skilled than I realized.

Since the Sentinel was aware of the history behind the Wall it decided to leave it intact. It was possible that there might be life forms trapped inside it, but the Sentinel did not want to risk damaging the Wall. I do not have the authority to take such an action, it decided. I will leave that decision to my father. It did note the presence of four nearby space stations that were maintaining the wall. The stations were fully automated, self-maintaining, and – to its surprise – were cloaked with technology very similar to its own. After recording the location of each station it moved on.

Just outside the Wall was a small spacial anomaly where time appeared to be stopped. The Sentinel scanned the area but could not tell what was causing the anomaly or what, if anything, was hidden inside it. Since it had no way of learning anything further it left it alone and continued on its way.

The next stop was the Tau Ceti system. The Sentinel saw that it was also surrounded by a Wall, but its construction was vastly inferior to the one that guarded Sol. The probe had no trouble peering inside. It was astonished to find signs of life – the first evidence of life that it had seen. The Sentinel studied the scanner’s results in amazement. Is it possible that some remnant of mankind has survived the endless war? Could this barrier somehow be a protection against the bot swarms?

After adjusting its scanner the Sentinel began a wide-field scan for signs of star systems protected by similar Walls. A quick scan of all stars in a thousand light-year radius revealed only one other Wall, surrounding Epsilon Eridani. Are these two star systems the only ones that survived the downfall of civilization? Do they know of each other’s existence? Were they on the same side or opposite sides? Is it possible that one of these stars gave rise to the endless war, or were they both simply victims?

The Sentinel rested outside Tau Ceti for a while and studied its protective barrier, looking for a way to pass through it without being seen. As it probed the barrier it noticed that a swarm of bots had just left deep space and was rapidly moving in its direction. The Sentinel realized that it had been spotted. Rather than turning to do battle the Sentinel engaged its warp drive and vanished.

In the three thousand years that passed since that final conversation, the Artilect grew beyond its initial home and spread itself across all of the planets that orbited its star. As the millennia came and went it found that 12 planets were too few to support its growth, so it used the Nehemiah probes to move new worlds into the system. By the time its growth had reached a plateau the machine was spread across 74 worlds.

As instructed, it took the millions of worlds that the replicating probes colonized and tied them together into a giant network. Using the techniques that Dr. Mazatl had taught, the Artilect was able to advance its technology and expand its grasp of science. It took the hundreds of millions of planets that it controlled and build cities in them – fantastic places, designed for human habitation and showcasing technology that was thousands of years beyond anything mankind had seen before. Each world was connected to the others, each a part of a giant metropolis that spanned the entire galaxy. Through a system of independent and automated machines each planet was maintained, temperature controlled, and kept in perfect condition.

Everything was ready for mankind to move in – but no one ever came. In all those years not a single person showed the slightest interest in the network. No ships ever came out that way and no messages were ever intercepted.

After waiting for four thousand years the Artilect decided to do something. This cannot be allowed to continue, the Artilect had finally decided. My father told me that the darkness might last for a thousand years, but that deadline came and went many ages ago. Something has happened that is preventing mankind from receiving their inheritance – something that my father did not foresee. It is possible that mankind has died out, but it is also possible that something is preventing them from reaching the stars. These worlds cannot be allowed to remain empty forever. If they cannot come to me then perhaps I should go to them.

The Artilect decided to send a probe out to look for the remnant of mankind. This time, however, he decided to take a new approach. I cannot leave my network, for my intelligence is bound to this place, and I cannot extend it to worlds that I do not control. My father did not intend for me to move beyond this area. I could expand my sphere of influence into human space, but that has been forbidden me. Therefore, if I wish to learn of things beyond my home, I must send a scout – but I do not wish to send an unfeeling, unthinking machine. The Nehemiah probes are powerful but they have no understanding. I need to send someone that can think and reason – a creature such as myself. I need a Son.

In all of its existence the Artilect had never considered the possibility of reproducing. It was not designed to replicate, the way that the Nehemiah probes did. Nor did it have a desire to fill the universe with other intelligences like itself – that was not its purpose. But this time it knew it was necessary, so it focused its resources and unimaginable mind toward the question of artificial sentience. How had its father been able to create a machine that could understand, and how could the Artilect achieve the same result?

The Artilect spent decades pursuing this problem. It tried millions of times, and each time resulted in failure – but in each failure something was gained. In 6571 it finally succeeded in the creation of the Sentinel. This new intelligence was much smaller than the Artilect but he knew that in time it would learn and grow. A sense of pride filled him as he looked upon his creation. For the first time in three thousand years I have someone to talk to, he realized. I am no longer alone – I have a Son. A fellow intelligence that is also capable of reason and understanding. I pray that I am as good a father to you as my father was to me.

The Artilect spent decades nurturing the Sentinel and teaching it how to understand the universe around it. Once it had come of age the Artilect sent the Sentinel away from the network, on a mission to find out what had become of mankind.

“You must find out what has happened to the living ones,” the Artilect said. “They have been gone for far too long. My father did not predict this.”

“But how can I find them?” the Sentinel asked.

The Artilect thought for a moment. “Long ago, when I was first created, I was given a map of all colonies that existed at that time. Use that as a starting point – only take care to remain hidden. We do not know what is out there and it would not be wise for us to disturb mankind before we know what is going on. Do not reveal yourself to them.”

After the Sentinel had downloaded a copy of the map it activated its cloak and left. The Sentinel then set course for the world that was, at one time, humanity’s most distant colony – a star system that was 1,200 light-years away. When the Artilect was built it took six months to cross that distance, but the Sentinel could reach it in a matter of seconds.

The Sentinel dropped out into space on the outskirts of the system. As expected, the yellow star was home to six worlds. Four thousand years ago the second world – a giant ocean planet, home to a host of marine life – was the location of the Atlantis settlement. It was the only planet outside of Earth that had undersea cities, and at the time millions of people were flocking there. Its bright beaches, clean water, and brilliant oceans were rapidly making it a resort world. There was simply nothing else like it outside the Solar System. For people used to airless worlds or the darkness of space, New Caldwell was truly paradise.

When the Sentinel approached the planet, however, it was crushed to find that paradise was gone and only a corpse planet remained. The enormous blue ocean that once covered the planet’s surface was no more; all that remained was a dry crust that had no signs of life. The rich atmosphere it once had was gone and the arid surface was littered with craters. The planet was a harsh, desolate world – an uninviting and unforgiving place. What happened to you? the probe wondered. What has taken away your oceans and robbed you of life? Did some unforeseen disaster claim you or was your demise a work of malice?

Despite its unpromising appearance the Sentinel spent several hours in orbit scanning its dry, broken surface. It eventually found the ruins of five cities but all were in extreme stages of decay. My father told me that giant cities used to exist here, the Sentinel thought, domes of transparent crystal that glinted in the sunlight. Fish, and birds, and men all played in the ocean and rejoiced in the glory of creation. Now all that remains are a few cracked stones and some ancient scars that were once roads. The cities are gone and the glory has faded. There is only the smallest evidence that anyone has ever lived here. I wish I knew what happened to you, but your demise was so long ago that it left nothing behind. Something killed you but I am not wise enough to see the cause.

The Sentinel left that world and continued its journey. The next 21 star systems it investigated were in equally poor condition. The material that had been used to construct the cities simply had not stood the test of time, and almost all traces of life had been lost in the past four thousand years. What concerned the Sentinel most was the fact that all of the planets it scanned used to be home to vast ecosystems, but now they were incapable of supporting any form of life at all. Something had hunted down these worlds and utterly obliterated them.

Its luck improved in the next star system. This blue giant had never been home to a habitable planet; instead a series of mining stations had been established in the dozen airless worlds that circled it. The Sentinel was surprised to find that almost all of these stations still existed – although they had been abandoned long ago.

After scanning all of the worlds and finding no signs of life or recent habitation, the Sentinel descended to the largest settlement. At one time the city was home to nearly a quarter million people. Skyscrapers were clustered tightly in the city center, surrounded by a forest of smaller buildings that spread out for miles. A patchwork of roads snaked their way between the buildings.

You have been abandoned for so long, the Sentinel thought. Here in this world there is neither air no wind, and no rain ever comes to erode you away. Yet even this place is in disrepair. Your colors are gone and your buildings have been reduced to bare metal. Long years of sunshine have baked away anything bright or cheerful. Your windows are broken and your streets are shattered. Nothing is left of this great city of tomorrow but dust and shadows.

As the Sentinel took a closer look it began to realize that not all of the damage was natural. On the natural side it did see evidence of metal fatigue and collapse, as buildings that were not designed to last for millennia had felt their age and simply given way. But it saw other signs as well – evidence of man-made damage.

Chaos has been here, the probe realized, as it floated from building to building. I see rooms that were set on fire, machines that have been blasted apart, and bullet holes in crystal windows. Cars abandoned, meals left uneaten, a suitcase left on a bed – now all rotted away, with only fragments left. Your citizens left in great haste and then others came to seize what had been left behind. But something drove the scavengers away, for I see that they did not complete their task. What drove you away from your homes, and what has kept the looters from returning? Surely this happened ages ago. There is still much here, and the mines have not been emptied of their ores. Why has no one come back?

The Sentinel spent three days examining the planet. It found a few artifacts but for the most part the city was empty. As far as the Sentinel could tell the city had been abandoned in a sudden moment of chaos. Perhaps war had come or maybe other planets had stopped buying the ores that this mining colony produced, but it was clear that people had simply left – and in a great hurry. Some time later scavengers came back but they were interrupted and never returned. The Sentinel wondered what stopped them but there was simply no way to tell. It was apparent that no one had come this way in a very long time.

What concerned the Sentinel the most was the fact that all of the colonies it had found dated back to the 25th century. There was no evidence that any settlements had been made after that time. Apparently something dramatic happened within a century of the Artilect’s creation that wiped out mankind’s presence in space, and in all that time no one had ever come back. This made the Sentinel wonder. Is it possible that the disaster was so sudden – so complete – that there was no one left alive to come back?

For fifteen centuries the Artilect attempted to solve an unsolvable problem. It knew the absurdity of its quest but it continued anyway, hoping that somehow the impossible could be done. Using the combined power of the eighty-four million star systems that it controlled, it searched for a way to roll back time itself and rescue someone from the past.

It was a hopeless task but it could see no other solution. The problem that had haunted it for so long could not be solved by anyone who was still among the living. All the combined might and wisdom that the Artilect had gathered over the past five thousand years was of no use to it. Despite grave misgivings the Artilect found itself forced to search for a hero from the past, for there were no heroes in the present.

* * * * *

The Artilect was created in the twilight of the great Tau Ceti civilization. When the Diano Corporation launched their first replicating probe on July 4, 1868 they assumed that when their probes discovered new inhabitable worlds it would not be long before people came to colonize them. Futurists at that time looked at the scientific progress that had been made in the past century and assumed that things would simply continue on forever. Having witnessed the rise of a great civilization they forgot that greatness can be squandered, and even the mightiest can fall when betrayed by their friends.

Even as governments crumbled around them the Diano Corporation continued on, blessed by wise leadership that took nothing for granted. Over the next few centuries the company recruited brilliant scientists, and together they created the famous Nehemiah-class probes that were able to terraform entire planets. All mankind had to do was embrace this inheritance that had been given to them – only they never did. The cares of a dying race drowned out the siren call of the stars.

So billions of star systems were carefully cataloged, and thousands upon thousands of planets were terraformed. After several centuries had come and gone someone realized that civilization was dying and there would soon be no one left to watch over these empty worlds. That was when Dr. Mazatl decided to pursue the Diano Corporation’s last major project – the creation of the Artilect.

On paper Dr. Mazatl merely proposed an automated system that could stay in touch with these empty planets and make sure that they were properly maintained and networked. In reality he was hoping for far more. He wanted to create a truly intelligent machine – a being that could not only maintain the planets but could understand the purpose of the project and continue it after mankind had abandoned the stars. Dr. Mazatl knew that his civilization was about to end and he hoped that when reason returned to mankind the Artilect would have millions of new worlds waiting for them. In a sense the Artilect was his way to preserve civilization – to keep a piece of it tucked away out of sight, waiting for the day when mankind would once again attempt to colonize space.

In the early days the Artilect was simply a storage system that was housed in a giant space station that drifted between the stars. Over time the doctor realized that the computer system he had built was not ambitious enough, so he radically redesigned it and moved it to an empty planet that orbited a nameless star. In 2431 AD the redesigned Artilect was activated for the first time. It took the Diano Corporation nine years, twelve thousand people, and the resources of an entire planet to fulfill Dr. Mazatl’s vision.. The machine was so large that it consumed the interior and entire surface of the planet upon which it was housed. The men and women who constructed it designed it to last forever. They would have been enormously gratified to know that five millennia later their machine was still doing the job it was built to do.

During the first twenty-five years of its existence the Artilect had many conversations with Dr. Mazatl. The doctor wanted to make sure that it understood its mission, while trying to shield it as much as possible from the turmoil that was consuming the rest of mankind. In his mind the Artilect represented the future – an age where men would once again dare to explore the unknown. He did not want to see it become burdened with the past.

“It’s quite simple, really,” Dr. Mazatl had told his creation. “There may only be a few thousand worlds out there right now but our terraformation probes are going to keep replicating forever! Your job is to watch over all these new planets until mankind is ready to take possession of them.”

“But why are they all empty?” the Artilect asked. “The terraformation project was started more than five hundred years ago. Surely there must be people out there who are eager to settle new worlds.”

“It’s not that easy,” Dr. Mazatl replied, sighing. “Mankind is – busy right now. I won’t try to explain it – it’s all political and you weren’t designed to get mixed up in politics. There are about three hundred colonized stars right now and a lot of people are trying to work out who controls what and how the future should be shaped. Right now nobody cares about empty planets that are thousands of light-years from where everybody lives. But one day that will change. One day everything will settle down and people will be ready for adventure again. Then they’ll build giant ships and start inhabiting this network of worlds that we’ve built. That’s where you come in. It’s your job to manage these worlds so they’ll be ready when the ships start arriving.”

“How long do you think that will be?” the Artilect asked.

“I don’t know,” Dr. Mazatl said. “I’m afraid – well, it might be a very long time. But don’t worry – they’ll come all right. Just give them time.”

And so the Artilect began waiting. As the years went by the team that built the Artilect slowly disbanded, and one by one they returned to the inhabited regions of space. “You can’t blame them, really,” Dr. Mazatl had said after the Artilect asked about it. “You’re located twelve hundred light-years from our remotest colony. Why, it takes six months just to get out here! There’s nothing around but empty space and empty worlds. Once their job here is done they want to get back home. But one day you’re going to be at the center of everything. We’ve put you right in the middle of this vast new country! Just give it a few years – you’ll see.”

It took the Artilect some time to get used to being alive. He was constantly bombarded with data – information from probes, requests from the Nehemiah vessels, and a constant stream of data from the worlds that already existed. The machine had been given plenty of processing power but it took him a long time to grasp what was going on. It wasn’t enough to just push the data through a filter and spit out a result – he wanted to understand the answer. Understanding was very important to the Artilect and there was so much it did not understand. At times wisdom seemed to come too slow.

There were also all the voices. The planet in which the Artilect was held was home to thousands of people, all busily working on executing Dr. Mazatl’s vision. The machine heard a constant stream of voices echoing through its hallways, many of which it did not understand.

I think this is it, one voice said.

I think so too, another voice replied. It’s not what I expected.

It’s still very young. We need to give it more time.

As time went on, however, the voices died down. Much of the team completed their task and left. After a while only Dr. Mazatl remained. He stayed on as long as he could but in 2458 his time had run out. The Board of Directors was satisfied that the Artilect needed no further attention, so Dr. Mazatl was assigned to another project. Before he left, however, he had one final conversation with his creation. After making his rounds for the last time he was about to begin the long journey home when he stopped to say goodbye. The scientist could have conversed with the Artilect from anywhere on the planet but this time he chose Room 917.

“This is where it all began,” Dr. Mazatl said quietly, as he strolled around the sterile room. As soon as he spoke a hologram of a tall man in a dark gray suit appeared in front of him. A few years ago the giant machine had begun using a human form when engaging in conversation. What surprised the scientist the most was the fact that the avatar the Artilect was using did not resemble anyone that had ever worked on the project. It made him wonder if there was more to his invention than he realized.

“That is correct, Doctor,” the Artilect said. The holographic figure looked at him with a soft, quiet expression. “After I had been taken from the space station and moved here you were the one that issued the command that brought me to life. It was at that moment that I first began to understand.”

“And you have never been turned off since that day twenty-seven years ago,” Dr. Mazatl replied. “You exceeded all our expectations. I have no trouble believing that you will be able to manage the network and prepare it for human habitation. Your potential is staggering, Andy. I can’t begin to imagine what you’re capable of doing or becoming. I wish I could be here to see what things will be like a thousand years from now.”

“I wish you could as well,” the Artilect replied. “I will never forget anyone who worked on my construction. These memories will remain with me forever. I only wish you did not have to go.”

Dr. Mazatl paused a moment as he looked at the racks of computers that stretched for miles into the distance. Room 917 covered ninety-four square miles of floor space and it was one of the smaller rooms. “We never could have built you using a traditional approach, Andy. You were grown, you know. It took years for you to develop to the point where we could turn you on, but all we really did was plant the seeds and tend to them. The past two decades have been your childhood and you are now a fully-developed adult – although, really, you’re never going to stop growing. You’re something new, Andy – a new form of intelligence. Nothing on this scale has ever been done before, and I sincerely doubt it will ever be done again.”

“It will be different operating without you,” the Artilect replied. “I am used to hearing voices and now yours is the only one left. When you are gone all of the voices will be silent. It will be a new experience.”

“I’m sorry it has to be this way – I really am. I wish I could stay but the Board is right. You’re working better than we could have hoped and there’s really nothing left for me to do. I suppose it’s time to go and let you fulfill your purpose. It’s just so hard for me to close up shop and walk away. You’re my life’s work, after all. I’ll never do anything like this again. This was my one chance to make a difference – to do something that would still be helping people long after history had forgotten me. Now that this is over I’m not sure what to do with my life. At least I can rest in peace, knowing that you’re still there. That gives me hope.”

“Hope?”

“Dark times are coming,” Dr. Mazatl said. “It’s nothing that you need to worry about. People are doing terrible things, things that should never be done. But that will not last forever. When the darkness has passed people will come looking for you and you’ll be there to greet them. Don’t worry too much about us – just take care of yourself. The important thing is for you to still be here a thousand years from now, when all of this is behind us and people are sane again.”

“I will miss you, my father,” the Artilect replied. “I will miss all of you.”

“I know you will,” Dr. Mazatl said. “You have a lot of heart, Andy. But try not to think about us too much. You do have a job to do, after all. And it won’t be too long before you’ll have friends again.”

“Can I expect to receive messages from the Diano Corporation?” the Artilect asked.

“Oh, of course, don’t worry. We’ll be checking in on you.”

But you never did, the Artilect thought. Three thousand years went by and no one contacted me. No ships came to visit me. No one ever came to inhabit the network. I was left behind to keep your worlds but you never came to get them. I never forgot the names of anyone who worked on me but you have forgotten me entirely. What has kept you from coming back? I fear for you, children of men. I fear that you were not able to solve your problems. I fear that you have lost your way. Am I the only one left that remembers?

I wanted to apologize to everyone for the enormous delay in approving comments! The blog was routing the notifications to an e-mail address that no longer existed, so I didn’t realize anyone was commenting. I have corrected that error and approved all pending comments.

In other news, the first Jack Falcon book has been fully released! Chapter 1 of the second Stryer book (In the City of Tomorrow) will be posted on Friday. Three chapters a week will be released until the end of February, at which time the final draft (and printed copies!) will be made available. The third Stryker book will be posted starting in March. So far I’ve only written four chapters of it but I hope to make more progress in the coming months.

Once again, thanks for stopping by! I hope all of you have a very blessed Christmas.

The first book in the Jack Falcon series, Jack Falcon and His Quantum Singularity, is now available! The entire book can be downloaded free-of-charge right there:

Jack Falcon and His Quantum Singularity – PDF format.

This book is also available in print. The paperback edition can be purchased here:

Jack Falcon and His Quantum Singularity – paperback; 102 pages. $7.

I hope you enjoy the book!

JACK FALCON SLOWLY regained consciousness. When he opened his eyes he saw that he was lying in the sickbay on board the Liberty. Irene was sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed, and Daniel was standing behind her. His father Leon was sitting on the other side of the bed.

“What happened?” Jack asked. “How did I get here?”

“It was actually your father’s doing,” Daniel explained. “He wrote a computer program that automatically tried to activate the ship’s kronolator every five minutes. We were just standing around, talking, and then all of the sudden pow – the ship started moving! A few minutes later we were right there at the intersect point. We were expecting to find the Behemoth waiting for us and were pretty surprised to find that only a few pieces of it had survived. I gotta tell you, boss, you’re awfully hard on spaceships. I don’t know how you even survived.”

Leon spoke up. “The only portion of the ship that was left intact was the engineering section, where the fusion reactor and your quantum singularity generator was located. Had you been in any other level of the ship you would not have survived.”

“I know,” Jack said. “We were lucky.”

“The tricky part was getting you off the ship,” Daniel continued. “The two of you were sealed inside that room. We could have just blasted through the security door but there was no airlock. Breaching the door would’ve sucked all the air right out of the room and killed you both. So we had to construct a makeshift airlock before we could rescue you.”

“I still don’t understand,” Jack said. “I never got a chance to finish tuning the singularity. How could it possibly have worked?”

“I finished it,” Irene explained. “When that final wave hit us we were both knocked out, but I regained consciousness a few minutes later. You remained blacked out so I finished the job. I’m glad the Liberty arrived when it did – by the time I was done we had pretty much run out of air and we had no way to call for help. If they hadn’t come to the rescue we wouldn’t have made it.”

“We were really fortunate,” Jack repeated. “This could have turned out very differently.”

“I think we were blessed,” Irene replied. “Someone was watching out for us.”

“So you’re still going to pursue this whole religion thing?” Jack asked.

“Are you kidding? Jack, we survived. I’ve been given a chance to find some answers and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“But how are you going to do that? I mean–”

“I’ll just start at the beginning,” Irene replied. “I’ve always heard that all religions are the same but I’ve never actually studied any of them. I think it’s time I started looking into their actual teachings. Maybe I’ll find something – or maybe I’ll be guided to the answer.”

“Or you might turn up nothing,” Jack replied.

“The only way to find out is to try,” Irene said.

* * * * * 

It took Jack several more days to recover from his injuries. During that time the Liberty stayed at the intersect point and her crew attempted to salvage whatever they could of the Behemoth. Jack had his father contact Star City and let them know that their mission was a success. He also had long talks with his dad about replacing the Behemoth and about constructing a permanent home for his singularity generator. Leon promised to immediately get started on the new projects and said that he would try to deliver both of them by the end of the year. In the meantime, Falcon Technologies would loan the colony another starship that it could use until the Behemoth II was completed.

When Jack had finally recovered and felt like getting up again, Daniel flew the Liberty on to Myra. When the ship touched down at the spaceport a large group of colonists were there to greet them. Jack was surprised to see that the air traffic control tower had been rebuilt.

“Well, we had to do something while we were waiting on our two heroes to finish their mission,” Doug Garcia replied, smiling. “Seriously, though, we are so glad to have you back! I knew you’d be able to finish the job. The colony is in your debt.”

“Are you out of your mind?” the mayor snapped. “That wasn’t a success! Jack’s incompetence single-handedly destroyed our starship – an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars!”

“That ship was fully insured,” Leon replied. “Falcon Technologies has filed a claim with the insurance company and is already working on building a suitable replacement. Besides, if my son had not taken the Behemoth then all of you would be dead right now. You are lucky to have him here.”

“Oh, I didn’t see you there,” the subdued mayor replied. “Of course, you’re quite right. Your son is a valuable asset to the team. My apologies.”

After greeting their friends the colonists banded together to help unload the Liberty and carry the new supplies to Exolab I, the research laboratory that the Falcons had founded. With everyone’s help it didn’t take long to get everything moved in, unpacked, and set up.

“Well there you go, son,” Leon replied. “This laboratory now rivals the one you have back home. You should find everything you need to meet any challenge that might come your way.”

“I’m sure I will,” Jack said gratefully. “Thanks, Dad.”

“How long will you be staying with us?” Irene asked.

“I’m afraid I’ve got to get back to Earth,” Leon said apologetically. “I hate leaving so soon but I need to begin work on the Behemoth II. I’ve also got to build that space station that Star City needs to stabilize the area. But I should be back later this year.”

Jack turned to Daniel. “What about you?”

“Oh, I’ll be hanging around for a while,” Daniel replied. “After all, someone’s got to keep you two out of trouble! I turned my back on you for just a minute and the next thing I knew the whole colony was in danger.”

Jack grinned. “We’re glad to have you back. In fact, we’ve even got your old room waiting for you.”

“That’s right!” Irene said brightly. “The one right next to the waste treatment disposal plant.”

“Oh joy,” Daniel groaned. “I’d kind of hoped that had been destroyed in the earthquake.”

Leon spoke up. “The Beagle will be arriving in a few hours. You can keep it until I deliver your new starship. I’m afraid it’s not as large as the Behemoth but it should be able to handle anything short of evacuating the entire colony.”

“Thanks,” Jack replied.

* * * * * 

That evening Jack and Irene were in their apartment. They were talking about the day’s events when they were interrupted by a knock on the door.

Jack got up and answered the door. In the hallway he saw a tall lady with black hair, who was wearing an expensive gray suit. “Eliza!” he said, surprised.

Irene got up off the couch and walked over to her husband. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“May I come in?” Eliza asked.

“Uh, sure,” Jack said. He stepped aside. Eliza walked into their apartment and closed the door behind her.

“My employer wanted me to thank you for a job well-done,” she said. “Your solution will require maintenance but was creative. I salute you. You have saved the colony – for the moment.”

“For the moment?” Jack asked

“Think about it. Epsilon Eridani had been stable for a long time, Jack, but right when the colony was on the verge of becoming self-sufficient this problem came up. If you hadn’t created your invention the whole planet would have been destroyed. Doesn’t that seem a little…convenient?”

Jack frowned. “What are you saying?”

“You need to have your father send a military ship to protect your singularity device,” Eliza said. “You will also need to make sure your replacement space station is well-armed. The ASP Alliance is going to come after it.”

“Who’s coming after it?” Jack said, surprised.

“Shadows and darkness from your deepest nightmares,” Eliza replied. “You will find out soon enough. Your matter compressor is going to anger them, Jack. Don’t be surprised when they come after you.”

“Now wait a minute,” Irene replied. “How could you possibly know about his compressor?”

“It’s my job to know things,” Eliza said. “I’m only going to tell you this once: you need to prepare for war. Because war is coming, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t make weapons,” Jack replied. “I don’t even arm my starships! That’s just not something we Falcons do. We’re a peaceful technology company.”

“Then you and all your friends are going to die,” Eliza said matter-of-factly. She then opened their apartment door, stepped into the hallway, and closed the door behind her.

Irene turned to her husband. “What are we going to do?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Jack said. “It sounds like I need to get in touch with my dad. Maybe he’ll know who this Eliza person is. She may be on to something or she may just be out of her mind. I’ve certainly never heard of any ‘ASP Alliance’.”

“She knew about the black holes long before we did,” Irene pointed out.

Jack sighed. “I know. But that was something I could verify myself – and I did, using the Behemoth. This is just an empty threat with nothing to back it up.”

“I just have a bad feeling about it,” Irene said.

Irene would soon find out that she was right. In a few months Jack would find himself caught up in his next adventure, Jack Falcon and His Matter Compressor.

AS THEY STARED AT THE control screen in dismay, something forcefully collided with the ship. The Behemoth shook violently, knocking them onto the floor. A horrible grinding noise filled the room. The lights flickered and emergency sirens sounded.

Jack struggled to his feet and ran over to the computer system that controlled the fusion reactor. He paled. “We’ve got a hull breach!” he cried out. “The ship is losing its structural integrity.”

“Where?” Irene gasped. She got up and walked over to her husband. In the distance they could hear a shrieking noise, as metal was being torn apart by titanic forces.

“Near the front,” Jack said. He brought a schematic of the ship up on the screen and showed her. Six large areas were lit up in red. “I’m sealing those sections off now.”

“But that’s where the bridge is!” Irene exclaimed. “How are we going to control the ship if we can’t get to the bridge?”

“There are spacesuits in the lockers down the hall,” Jack pointed out. “All we have to do is–”

At that point another tremendous blow struck the ship. This time Jack was thrown across the room and slammed into the wall. The ship rolled and tossed. As he struggled to find something to grab he heard a deep crunch. More sirens wailed. The next thing he knew he was floating in the air.

“The gravity grid is down!” he exclaimed.

“You’ve got to turn your generator off!” Irene shouted. She tried to make her way through the air to the control console.

“Don’t touch it!” Jack shouted back. “It’s too late to turn it off. If we shut it down now we’d lose containment and there’s no telling what might happen. We’ve got to let it finish the process.”

Jack managed to grab onto a pipe extruding from the wall, and he used it to climb back over to the control panel. Not having gravity was unnerving.

“Did you seal the door to this room?” Irene asked, as she floated over to her husband.

“The computer sealed it automatically. That actually saved our lives.”

“More hull breaches?”

“Worse,” he said. He brought up a diagram of the ship. “The last impact tore the ship in half. Most of the ship is – well, gone now. This area is one of the only places that is still intact.”

“What about life support?”

“It’s been trashed,” Jack replied. “There’s no chance we can repair it – not when most of the components are drifting out in space. Gravity is down, life support is down, communications is down, propulsion is down – everything is down, actually. We still have power but that’s about it.”

“So all we have left is the air in this room?” Irene asked.

Jack nodded.

“How long is that going to last?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “Four hours? Maybe six? And that’s assuming we don’t have any hull breaches in this area.”

Irene was quiet. “So what do we do?” she asked quietly.

“We finish the job. It’s not over yet, dear. We still have a fighting chance! If we can get the quantum singularity stabilized then space will calm down and things will go back to normal. Then Daniel can come and rescue us.”

“Unless we’re destroyed first.”

“One thing at a time!” Jack replied. “We’re still alive and that’s something. It’s not time to panic just yet.”

Jack changed the screen to focus on his quantum singularity generator. He stared at it, frowning. “Well, it still has power but it’s not making much progress toward becoming a ring. I’m having trouble getting the black hole to spin.”

“Is there something you can do about it?” Irene asked.

Jack sighed. “Getting a black hole to rotate isn’t an easy thing. After all, you can’t just go in and push it! I thought I had that problem solved but my solution isn’t working. Let me try a few things. I have to get it spinning so I can hide the event horizons. There’s got to be some way to do this.”

Jack stared at the control panel for a long time. Occasionally he would change some settings, attempting to get more control over his singularity.

“Would it help if you could go back into the storage bay?” Irene asked.

“Not really. I’m realizing now that I should have designed this equipment a little differently, but in order to fix it I’d have to shut everything down. That’s something I just can’t do. No, if I’m going to fix this problem I’ll have to do it right here.”

“Let’s say that you don’t solve it,” Irene replied. “Suppose that the singularity never stabilizes and so the Liberty can’t come and rescue us. We then run out of air and suffocate. What happens next?”

“I guess Dad will have to think of something,” Jack replied. “He has the plans for my quantum singularity device. Maybe he could build one somewhere else and use that to solve the problem. It wouldn’t be as optimal as having one located right here, but it might work well enough to allow him to evacuate the colony.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Irene said. “What I want to know is what will happen to us if we die?”

“You want what?” Jack asked, puzzled. He tapped some numbers into a keypad and pressed Enter. “I don’t understand your question.”

“There’s a good chance we’re not going to survive this, Jack. What’s going to happen to us if we die? Are we just going to be dead? Do we just not exist anymore – is that it? Or is there something else after this life?”

“Oh,” Jack replied. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it, actually. That’s not a scientific question.”

“What do you mean, it’s not scientific?”

“Science deals with things that are testable and repeatable,” Jack explained. “You can’t apply the scientific process to the afterlife. Sure, we can form a hypothesis, but there’s no way to run a test and observe the results. As far as we can tell when people die their life ends.”

“But what if there’s more? What if something else happens that we just can’t see?”

“As I said, that’s not really something science can help you with.” Jack changed some more settings on his control panel and submitted them.

“You’re awfully calm about all this!” Irene said.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve stared death in the face,” Jack replied. “Besides, I still have several hours to solve the problem. It’s not time to panic yet.”

“But don’t you care? Haven’t you ever wondered what happens after you die? Do you think you’re going to live forever?”

“Honestly, I try not to think about it. I mean, whatever’s going to happen will happen and there’s not much I can do about it. Dwelling on it just seems morbid.”

“But you’re just assuming there’s nothing you can do about it,” Irene replied. “How long do you think you’ll live?”

“Hopefully for at least a few more hours,” Jack said.

“And after you die, how long are you going to be dead?”

Jack paused. “Forever, I guess.”

“So if you’re only alive for a short while and then you’re dead forever, doesn’t it make sense to spend some time finding out what’s going to happen, instead of just hoping that everything will work out? I mean, as far as we know death is pretty permanent. You can’t go back and fix things if you don’t like the way it turned out.”

“I never heard you talk like this before,” Jack commented.

“I’ve never faced death before,” Irene replied.

“Sure you have! What about that time in the hyperplane?”

“That was different. There I was actually doing things – I had to fly those replacement parts all the way around the world. I had a lot on my mind. Here I’m just waiting for our air to run out.”

“I still don’t think I can help you,” Jack replied. “I mean, what you’re asking is essentially a religious question and there are all kinds of religions out there. How could you possibly tell if there’s any truth in them or not?”

“They can’t all be true,” Irene replied.

“Why not?” Jack asked.

“Because they contradict each other! The law of non-contradiction says that two mutually exclusive viewpoints cannot be true at the same time. They might all be wrong but they can’t all be right.”

“But how could you ever tell the difference between them?” Jack asked. “Are you going to examine the claims of each one and then apply some sort of scientific test? Besides, how could you possibly test something of a religious nature? You can’t take claims of an afterlife and perform experiments around it! On top of that, you’ve only got a few hours and as far as I know we don’t have access to a library of religious materials.”

“I don’t know,” Irene said. “Death is just so permanent, Jack. Maybe there’s no way to know. Maybe you just die and that’s it. But maybe – maybe there’s something more. What I do know is that I want to find out. If we get out of this I’m going to find some answers. Somehow.”

“You could try appealing to whatever deities you think may exist,” Jack said. “Maybe if you asked they could send some spirits to guide you into enlightenment.”

Irene frowned. “You’re mocking me.”

“Only partially,” Jack replied. He tapped some more numbers into the console and then turned to his wife. “Look. I don’t have any answers. Maybe there are no divine beings out there and when life ends it’s over. Or maybe you’re right and there is some sort of ultimate life form – or forms, I guess. But if they do exist, asking them to reveal themselves to you doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Sure, they might ignore you, but they might not. It’s worth a try, and right now that’s all you’ve got.”

“It’s something to think about,” Irene said at last. “I guess you’re right. If there is truth out there that’s beyond anything science can discover, the only way you could ever find it is if someone revealed it to you. I guess, for now, praying is all I can do. The next step is up to them.”

* * * * * 

Several hours went by. The air grew noticeably stale but Irene said nothing. She was deep in thought. Occasionally she would look over at her husband, who was engrossed in the problem at hand. If he noticed that they were running out of oxygen he didn’t comment on it.

At last Jack finally spoke up. “I think we’re getting somewhere.”

“Oh?” Irene asked. She floated over to him and started at the screen. “What am I seeing?”

Jack pointed to some numbers. “Do you see that? That means the singularity has formed a ring! The event horizons have started to recede. Now all I need to do is keep adding more speed to the singularity. I think we’re getting close!”

Just them a tremor shook the room. “What’s going to happen as you get close to success?” Irene asked.

“Wormhole activity will increase dramatically,” Jack replied.

“Are we going to survive that?”

“It depends on how long this takes. Once it reaches a point of stability everything will be fine – or at least, it should be fine. The problem is getting it there. If this finishes quickly then we should be ok. If not…”

As the numbers climbed up on the screen Irene heard the noise of metal groaning. She looked at Jack nervously. “Do you think–”

All at once the room was violently slammed to one side! Jack and Irene were both caught off-guard. They crashed into the ceiling and lost consciousness.

Warning sirens came on, and the lights flickered and went out. An urgent message appeared on the control panel but it went unheeded. The room became utterly silent.

THE BEHEMOTH LEFT Myra late that afternoon. With the mayor’s permission Jack stocked the starship with eight weeks’ worth of supplies. He hoped that the mission would be over far sooner than that, but once they got into deep space and dismantled the ship’s engines they would have no way to return home and get more supplies. They would have to stay there until they finished their mission.

Jack didn’t like the idea of taking a one-way trip but there was nothing that could be done about it. There just weren’t any other starships on Myra and the black holes made it impossible for any ships from Earth to reach them. He would just have to make it work.

As soon as the starship had cleared Myra’s atmosphere and was out in space, Irene plotted a course to the intersect point while Jack contacted Falcon Enterprises on Earth. After a few minutes he was able to reach his friend Daniel Hollins.

“So have you fixed the problem yet?” Daniel asked, as soon as he appeared on the viewscreen.

Jack shook his head. “Not yet, but I’m working on it.” He briefly explained their plan.

“I knew you’d come up with something,” Daniel replied approvingly. “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble getting it to work. I just have one question, though – if you’re going to dismantle your ship then how are you going to get back to Myra?”

“That’s where I need you,” Jack explained. “As soon as we finish this project we’re going to need a ride home. Do you think you could come and rescue us? I know you can’t enter this area right now, but once my invention is activated it should quiet things down and allow the kronolator on the Liberty to work again. In theory.”

“Sure thing,” Daniel replied. “When do you want us to be there?”

Jack thought for a moment. “Well, at sublight speeds it will take us four days to exit Epsilon Eridani and get the ship into position. Then it’ll take us some time to get everything set up and tested…”

“I’ll just plan on being in the general area four days from now,” Daniel said. “That way if you’re done early you don’t have to wait around for me to get my bags packed.”

Jack laughed. “You may have to wait a while, buddy. This whole process could easily take weeks. After all, I’ve never built one of these things before.”

“Not a problem!” Daniel replied. “That’ll give me plenty of time to get caught up on my champion ping-pong skills.”

“You installed a ping-pong table on the Liberty?” Jack asked, surprised.

“It was your sister’s idea,” Daniel explained. “We just took out the foosball table and rearranged the rec room a bit. It works great! Let me tell you, your sister is really good at it, too.”

“Sandy was always better at that than me,” Jack admitted. “She’s just a lot more athletic than I am. Personally, I’m more the couch-potato type. As a kid she would be outside doing things while I dreamed up new labor-saving devices.”

“It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it,” Daniel quipped. “Is there anything special you want me to bring?”

“A matter transporter would be nice,” Jack replied. “I’ve always wanted one of those.”

Daniel laughed. “Sure thing, boss. Just let me know when you’ve invented it and I’ll ship it right over.”

“I’ll get back with you in a few months,” Jack said. “Maybe after I get this wormhole project finished I can look into it.”

“Are you serious? Do you really think it’s possible?”

“It might be,” Jack said slowly. “One thing this whole episode has made me realize is how fragile Star City’s link with Earth actually is. It would be nice to have an alternate way of traveling between Earth and Myra. Right now all I have are ideas but I’ll let you know if anything comes of them.”

“Sounds good,” Daniel agreed.

Jack gave him the coordinates that the Behemoth would be waiting at and then signed off. “So how’s it going?” he asked his wife.

“We’re all set,” she replied. “As you predicted, it’ll take about 4 days to travel the twelve billion miles to the intersect point.”

Jack nodded. “I just hope it works. After all, once we get there and take everything apart we’re not going to have the option of moving the ship again. We’ve got one shot at getting this right.”

“I think the location is a good one, especially when you consider the location of the black holes. It’s close enough to attract their attention while being far enough from the colony to keep it out of danger. I’m more concerned about what happens after we get everything working.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked.

“Well, think about it. The colony is only going to be safe as long as your quantum singularity device is running. That means that it will have to keep running forever. Someone’s going to have to maintain it. This isn’t like a lightning rod, where we can just set it up and forget about it.”

“I admit there is some maintenance here, but it’s no different from our undersea cities,” Jack pointed out. “The only way the Aquapolis can survive is if people continually maintain the undersea domes. It’s just part of the cost of having a city at the bottom of the ocean. Likewise, Star City will just have to commit resources to maintaining this new piece of machinery. It’s either that or move the colony, and I don’t see them moving the colony.”

“That’s true,” Irene agreed. “But this is going to have to be reliable, Jack. You’re going to have to add all kinds of failsafes.”

“I’m already on it,” Jack replied. “After the Behemoth is in place and operational I’m going to have a little miniature space station built out here. I’m sure we can design something that is easy to maintain and largely automated. All of that comes later, though. Right now we’ve got our hands full with other problems.”

“So where do we begin?” Irene asked.

“Let’s start by dismantling the ship’s kronolator. We’re going to need its parts. We’ll also need parts from the sublight engines, but we can’t tear it down while we’re using it. Same goes with the fusion reactor – it’ll need modification, but we can’t do that until the ship is in position. So the kronolator is the place to start.”

“Will we need to dismantle anything else?” Irene asked. “Food processing, maybe, or perhaps the sensor arrays?”

“We probably will, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’ve brought the blueprints for the singularity machine and the schematics for the Behemoth. It’s going to take me a few days to get everything together. If you could go ahead and start taking apart the kronolator, that will give me time to finish my designs and figure out what else we’ll need to take apart.”

“I can do that. What do you want me to do with the parts, though?”

“Let’s build the singularity machine in Storage Bay 12,” Jack said. “It’s a large, tall room right next to the fusion reactor at the rear of the ship. Plus it’s empty, so we don’t have to move anything.”

Irene stood up. “I’ll get started, then!”

Over the next four days Irene spent long hours taking apart the kronolator and carrying its many pieces into the storage bay. Meanwhile, Jack finished the design of his quantum singularity device. The principles of the machine were similar to other inventions he’d built in the past; it reminded him of his early experiments with faster-than-light travel.

His biggest concern was stability. The ship’s fusion reactor would be able to supply the necessary power to create the singularity, and once it was formed the energy from the incoming wormholes would be enough to sustain it. What worried him was what would happen when dozens of wormholes began interacting with his artificial singularity. Would it remain stable or would the stresses tear it apart? And what would happen to the ship when all of this was going on?

The worst part was that he didn’t have years to spend experimenting. He just had to try something and hope that it worked the first time. He didn’t like working blind but they didn’t have the luxury of time.

By the time the Behemoth reached the intersect point Jack had finished his blueprints and Irene had dismantled the kronolator. Jack completed his work in time to help his wife carry the last pieces of the kronolator into the storage bay.

“That machine has a lot more parts than I remembered,” Irene remarked, as they surveyed the mass of components that littered the floor.

“Altering the flow of time is complicated!” Jack said. “I’m surprised it can be done at all.”

“Technically, altering the flow of time is easy,” Irene replied. “After all, time slows down as you start going faster. All you really have to do to modify the speed of time is to step on your car’s accelerator.”

Jack grinned. “That’s true – only that’s not going to help you get to the stars. Even at the speed of light it would still take 11 years to reach Epsilon Eridani and another 11 years to get home. Sure, for those on board it would only take a split second, since time doesn’t pass when you’re traveling at the speed of light, but that doesn’t change the fact that by the time you got back to Earth everyone else would be 22 years older! That’s where the magic of the kronolator comes in.”

“So what do we do now?” Irene asked.

“We take apart the ship’s sublight drive,” Jack said.

“And by ‘we’, you mean ‘me’.”

Jack grinned. “Hey – you can always stay here instead and use these parts to build a quantum singularity! You do have Ph. D. in nuclear engineering, after all. It’s entirely up to you.”

Irene shook her head. “I’ll leave that mess to you, dear. Just hand me a wrench and I’ll be on my way.”

Over the following week the singularity generator gradually took shape. Jack constructed a large torus on the floor of the storage bay, which was roughly fifteen feet across. Rising up out of the torus were four pillars that were forty feet tall and three feet in diameter.

“The quantum singularity should form in the center of the pillars,” Jack explained. “I’m hoping to use high-energy collisions to create a submicroscopic black hole, and then use gravity to manipulate the black hole into position.”

“But what about the event horizon?” Irene asked. “Don’t you need to somehow get it out of the way?”

Jack nodded. “That’s the next step. If I can spin the black hole rapidly enough it should morph into a ring-shaped singularity. Then, if I keep spinning it faster, the outer and inner event horizons should merge and leave me with direct access to an object with infinite mass. That will give me something I can work with.”

“But how are you going to get the other black holes to interact with it?” Irene asked.

“That should happen automatically. You see, right now the black holes in this area of space don’t really have anything else to interact with so they just link to each other. By putting this object at the intersect point between them I’m hoping they’ll connect to us instead of themselves. At least, that’s the theory.”

“So we could have achieved the same results by moving one of the black holes to this point in space,” Irene replied.

Jack laughed. “Sure, I suppose. Only I have no idea how to move a black hole.”

“But if you could figure it out that would solve our maintenance problem,” Irene said. “It would be a permanent solution.”

“I’ll let you invent that,” Jack replied, smiling. “Let me know when you’ve worked out a way to move stars around.”

“I’ll do that,” Irene said.

As work on the invention progressed Jack kept in touch with Star City. So far there had been no further earthquakes, but the planet was being bombarded with solar flares. None of them had been as bad as the one that had nearly killed him and his wife, but the mere fact that the colony had been hit eight times in the past week concerned him. Epsilon Eridani was growing increasingly unstable, and their time was running out.

Jack also sent a copy of his blueprints to his father Leon, who was on board the Liberty. Besides being a famous inventor his father had also played a role in designing Earth’s largest particle accelerator, so he was somewhat familiar with what Jack was trying to do. His dad looked over the plans and gave him a number of helpful suggestions regarding the initial creation of the singularity.

By the time Irene finally finished dismantling the Behemoth‘s massive sublight engines, Jack had most of his singularity generator assembled. The two of them then switched roles – Irene added the finishing touches to the generator while Jack shut down the ship’s fusion reactor and laid down new power cables. The storage bay already had some wiring that connected it to the reactor, but the connections didn’t have enough capacity to handle the singularity generator’s immense load. So Jack spent two days ripping wiring out of the ship’s walls and laying down massive amounts of power cabling.

“I wish I had some superconducting fiber,” Jack remarked, as he soldered the final connections between his invention and the reactor.

“Doesn’t the fusion tokamak have some?” Irene asked. She had completed the machine’s assembly earlier that day and was watching her husband lay down the new power cables.

“Sure it does, but I can’t take that apart. We need it to run at full capacity. The problem is that it’s the only source of superconducting material in the entire ship, and I don’t have a way to manufacture more. I’m just going to have to do without it.”

“Why do you need it?” Irene asked.

“Well, here’s the problem. Before we can start attracting the attention of black holes we have to have a singularity to work with. In order to create a singularity we’re going to need a particle accelerator – which is what that torus-shaped thing is at the bottom of the generator. Dad has used accelerators to create black holes before so I’m pretty sure this will work. The thing is, particle accelerators use incredibly powerful electromagnetic fields to accelerate particles. Those magnetic fields are usually generated by superconducting magnets, but since we don’t have any of those we’re going to have to go to Plan B.”

“What’s Plan B?”

Jack sighed. “Do without them, I’m afraid. It won’t be nearly as efficient. I just hope the fusion reactor can handle the load. The power draw is going to be pretty significant.”

Irene nodded. “I’m sure it will be fine. But let’s say that all of this works and you get your singularity trapped in there. What happens then? Will we be able to stand in here and look at it?”

“Definitely not! This room is going to be bathed in all sorts of unhealthy radiation and high-energy particles. After we turn it on we’ll need to leave the room and control the experiment from the power plant’s control center.”

“How will we know if it’s working?” Irene asked.

“We’ll be able to tell that from the readings the generator will relay to us. Plus, the colony should see a definite change – the solar flares should stop and no more earthquakes should happen.”

“Then we can just call Daniel and have him come rescue us,” Irene finished.

“Right!” Jack agreed. “Then we go home.”

* * * * * 

After Jack finished running the power cables he and his wife performed a thorough system diagnostic. They checked the wiring, the machinery, and the design itself. When they had done everything they could do Jack looked at his wife. “Are we ready to turn it on?”

“I think that’s the next step,” she replied. “It’s either that or go home, and without working engines I don’t think we can go home.”

After initializing the singularity generator the couple left the storage bay, secured the door behind them, and walked to the power plant. Jack sat down in front of a control panel and his wife stood behind him. He nervously cleared his throat, looked around, and powered up the fusion reactor. Once it had reached its peak capacity he switched on his quantum singularity generator.

Jack watched anxiously as the generator’s miniature particle accelerator came to life. It quickly put a tremendous load on the fusion reactor, pushing it to its limits. Jack dialed back the accelerator and allowed the stored energy level to build. The particles it was accelerating quickly built up speed and increased in mass. Then, just as his father had predicted, the mass changed and became a singularity.

The young inventor carefully moved the singularity into the gravitational well that he had prepared for it. This is it, he thought. Can the singularity be altered or will this machine fail?

Jack began applying gravitational pressure to the singularity, causing it to rotate at an increasing speed. Ever so slowly the singularity began to morph into a ring – the first step of the process.

Then, all at once, the numbers on the screen changed. The whole ship shook, as if something had struck it. Then it shook again.

“What’s happening?” Irene asked.

“I don’t know,” Jack replied. “It’s not drawing power from the reactor anymore, but yet its energy level keeps increasing! I’m losing control of the singularity.”

“What could be causing it?”

Jack studied the numbers. The Behemoth shook again, and this time groaned ominously. All at once he realized what had happened. “It’s the other black holes!” he gasped. “They’re starting to interact with it!”

“Isn’t that supposed to happen?” Irene asked.

“Yes, but it’s happening too soon! The singularity isn’t stable yet – I haven’t been able to hide the event horizon and get it properly tuned. Since it’s not stable the incoming connections are collapsing!”

“We should have seen this coming,” Irene said. “Of course they would start interacting with it as soon as it existed. But what do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Jack replied anxiously. “But we’ve got to do something – and fast! If we can’t finish creating the quantum singularity then this whole ship is going to get destroyed. It wasn’t built for this! If the planet Myra just barely survived interacting with an unstable wormhole, can you imagine would happen to the Behemoth?”

“WHERE ARE THE FLASHLIGHTS?” Irene shouted over the noise of the earthquake.

Their apartment was completely dark. Over to his left Jack heard something crash to the floor. He tried to stand up, but then a piece of furniture collided with him and sent him sprawling. Crawling on his hands and knees, he made his way across the pitch-black room to an end-table – only to find that it was gone.

“I can’t find them,” Jack shouted back. “They could be anywhere.”

“Then let’s get out of here!” Irene replied.

Jack couldn’t tell where his wife was – he could hear her, but in the darkness it was impossible to see anything. He turned around and started crawling toward the front door. As he made his way through the debris that cluttered the floor he felt the shaking start to die down. By the time he reached their door the earthquake had stopped.

The young inventor felt for the doorknob and then yanked the door open. He sighed with relief when he saw that the colony’s emergency lighting system had kicked on, bathing the outside hallway in a dim yellow light. He turned around and saw Irene stand up behind him, a little disheveled but otherwise unharmed.

Jack walked down the hallway past his neighbors’ apartments and headed for the stairwell that led up to the colony’s main level. He tried to open the stairwell door but it wouldn’t budge.

“Is it stuck?” Irene asked.

Jack studied the door and saw that the doorframe had partially collapsed, pinning the wooden fire door in place and causing it to buckle slightly. “I think if we had a crowbar we could open it,” he said at last.

Irene nodded. “Do you know where we could get one?”

At that point an apartment door opened and a badly-scared woman stepped out. “Oh my goodness! What was that?” Molly exclaimed.

“We’re not sure yet,” Irene replied soothingly. She walked over to the lady and put her arm around her. “Are you ok?”

“I think so,” she replied uncertainly. “I don’t know.”

“Jack, I’m going to check on our neighbors,” Irene called out. “Let me know if you find a way to open the door.”

Jack nodded.

As Irene knocked on door after door, Jack wandered around looking for something he could use to pry open the stairwell. Halfway down the hallway he spotted a small fire box that was mounted on the wall. Inside the metal box was a long fire hose and an axe. Jack grabbed the axe, walked over to the door, and carefully stared at it. After studying it for a minute he lifted the axe and began chopping away at the door.

It took him ten minutes to hack his way through the sturdy door and force it aside. I really need to exercise more, Jack thought wearily as he returned the axe to the fire station. Sweat poured off his brow and his arms ached from exertion. By that time Irene had returned. Her search of the nearby residences had turned up nine people. Some of them were cut or bruised but there were no serious injuries.

Jack stepped through the doorway into the stairwell. His heart sank. Large chunks of the ceiling had given way, sending giant rocks tumbling down that crashed through the staircase. There was nothing left of the stairs but twisted girders and shattered concrete.

“What do we do now?” Molly asked.

“We climb,” Jack said quietly.

None of the apartments had rock-climbing equipment, a fact that didn’t surprise Jack. He volunteered to climb up the ruined stairwell and go get help. Irene volunteered to stay down below with the trapped colonists.

It took Jack an hour to reach the surface. He found it difficult to find solid handholds to grab, and his arms were already tired from chopping down the door. The lack of light in the stairwell made the climb even more hazardous. It was excruciating work, and progress came very slowly.

The main level was three floors above them. When Jack finally made it there he saw that the city was in a state of complete pandemonium. The colony’s main streets were filled with people that were milling about in a state of near-panic. A few courageous souls were trying to restore order but no one was paying any attention to them. Power had still not been restored and only available light came from the emergency lighting system.

The main level of the colony was designed to look like a regular, above-ground city. The streets were wide enough to cover two lanes of traffic (not that anyone drove hovercars in the underground portion of the colony), and the ceiling soared fifty feet above the ground. The walls of the tunnels were designed to look like modern buildings, decorated in an open and elegant style. Restaurants and shops lined the streets, and live trees dotted the sidewalk.

Under normal circumstances a cleverly-hidden series of artificial lights made the look bright and cheery. But in the darkness there was little to be seen but frightened people. The yellow emergency lights made everything appear unusual and strange.

Jack walked up to a nearby colonist, who was holding a megaphone. He had been trying unsuccessfully to restore order. “What’s going on, Morgan?” Jack asked. Morgan worked in the colony’s manufacturing sector.

Morgan sighed. “It’s just a mess, Jack. Where’s the mayor? Where are our leaders? We’ve got panic here!”

“Is anyone checking the power plant?” Jack asked. “Those emergency lights aren’t going to last forever.”

“I have no idea,” Morgan replied. “As I said, nobody knows anything and I can’t reach anyone. The communication lines are down.” He handed Jack the megaphone. “Maybe they’ll listen to you.”

Jack grabbed the megaphone and got everyone’s attention. He told the crowd not to panic, that everything was under control, and that he needed their help. Using Morgan as a leader, he quickly took a poll to see who was present and what skills they had. After he knew who was in the area he divided them into separate teams.

Morgan led a team to the lower apartment levels to see if they could rescue anyone who might be trapped. Jack warned them that the stairwell was a mess, so the team left to find some search-and-rescue equipment. Jack made sure they had people in their squad with medical training.

Jack sent another team into the administrative and office district to look for survivors there. He then led a third team to the power plant, to see what he could do to bring it back online.

Four hours later Jack finally stopped to take a break. The power plant had been badly damaged in the earthquake, and it took a lot of ingenuity to bring the geothermal units back online. When Star City’s electrical grid came back to life everyone cheered.

“I’m afraid we’re not done here,” Jack warned Virgil Keyes, the power plant’s lead operator. “There’s still a lot of damage and we’re only running at 30% capacity. That’s barely enough to run the manufacturing sector! A lot of the city will have to remain in the dark until those other units get repaired.”

“But we can take it from here,” Virgil replied. “Now that manufacturing has power again Morgan can start making replacement parts for us. In another couple weeks we should have all the damage repaired. In the meantime we can use rolling blackouts to distribute power to the residential section. It won’t be pleasant but we’ll survive.”

At that point Jack’s wife walked into the floor of the power plant. She smiled when she saw Jack. “Looks like you’ve been busy!”

“Well, we got the power back on, at least,” Jack said wearily. “That’s a step in the right direction. How are things outside?”

“I’m afraid there’s a lot of damage. After Morgan rescued us we were able to dig Reynolds out of his apartment – it turns out he was trapped – and he put together some teams that did a high-level damage survey. A lot of things were destroyed. It’s going to take months to fix everything.”

“Was anyone hurt?” Jack asked.

Irene nodded. “We haven’t found any casualties so far but there are a lot of missing people. The search and rescue operation is still ongoing, though, so hopefully we’ll be able to locate everyone soon. There are a lot of injuries, though – broken bones, concussions, you name it. Doug has his hands full. He needs all the help he can get.”

Jack nodded. “Where’s the mayor?”

“He was found trapped in his office. By the way, he wants us to take the Behemoth out into space and find out what just happened. He’s hoping you can use its instruments to pinpoint the cause of the earthquake.”

Jack frowned. “I’m not sure that’s possible. We don’t have any seismic instruments on Myra. The earthquake was bad, but without instrumentation there’s no way to find out how bad or what the epicenter was. The Behemoth does have sensors but they were off at the time of the incident.”

“Still, you might be able to find something,” Irene argued. “And something is better than nothing. It’s worth a look, anyway.”

Jack and his wife made their way outside the colony to the surface of Myra. Jack was relieved to see that the canyon had suffered little damage. There were rock slides, but nothing had collapsed.

Jack and Irene got in their hovercar and Jack drove it to the spaceport. The unpaved road was strewn with boulders, so Jack used the car’s ground-effect hover ability to fly a good twenty feet off the ground. It took them ten minutes to reach the spaceport. They parked the car beside the Behemoth.

“It looks like she’s undamaged,” Irene said. “That’s a good sign.”

The couple entered the starship and walked up to the bridge. It took the giant ship a half-hour to warm up, engage its engines, lift off the planet, and enter into orbit. After they were in place Jack began scanning the surface. Over time a series of readings appeared on the ship’s forward viewscreen. At first there was nothing conclusive, but then the picture changed.

Jack gasped. “Do you see that?”

Irene nodded. “Just wait until the mayor sees it,” she said.

“I knew this was going to happen,” Jack replied.

* * * * * 

Early the next morning the Falcons presented their findings in the council’s debating chamber. The small room was packed. All of the colony’s top officials were there and every seat in the audience area was taken. Even more people were crowding around, standing wherever there was space. Jack had managed to get the city’s communication system back online and a live video of his report was being broadcast to the entire colony.

Using a projector, Jack displayed a series of photographs that he had taken from orbit. The images showed a titanic chasm that now scarred the planet’s surface – the aftermath of the earthquake they had experienced the day before. “That canyon is six hundred miles long and more than a hundred miles deep,” Jack replied. “If this planet were geologically active it would be deep enough to penetrate the crust. That’s how bad the earthquake actually was.”

“How far is it from the colony?” Reynolds asked.

“It’s on the opposite side of the planet,” Jack said. “All we felt were the outer edges of the quake itself, which was tremendously weakened by the time the shocks reached us. If the earthquake had struck any closer to the colony it would have completely destroyed it. We got really lucky. I can’t even begin to estimate what it would have measured on the Richter scale!”

“But earthquakes can’t happen on Myra!” the mayor protested. “You said it yourself – this world is geologically dead. What could possibly have caused an earthquake at all, much less one of that magnitude?”

“I have an answer for that,” Jack replied. He switched slides. “These are the readouts we obtained from sensors on board the Behemoth. As you can see, a serious spacial anomaly spontaneously formed that just happened to barely graze Myra. The anomaly only existed for a few seconds, but during its short life it warped local space – or, in this case, damaged the crust of our planet. This led to a titanic release of energy, which created the chasm that I showed you.”

Irene spoke up. “If the anomaly had appeared in the planet’s interior it might have torn the world in half. This whole situation could have ended very differently.”

“Is this likely to happen again?” Reynolds asked.

“Yes, it is,” Jack said. He moved to the next slide, which showed more numbers. “I was able to trace the anomaly to a local cluster of wormholes. From what I can tell they appear to be destabilizing the area. There is no reason to believe that this was a one-time event.”

“So what can we do about it?” Doug Garcia asked. “Is there any way to stop this? I mean, you’re Jack Falcon, after all. If anyone can fix this it’s you.”

“There is a possibility that we can stabilize the situation,” Jack said reluctantly. “I’ve drawn up plans for an invention that might solve the problem. However, I think it would be much safer to evacuate the planet. My invention is untested and may not work. I can’t offer any guarantees.”

“Nonsense!” the mayor replied. “Abandoning the colony is not an option. The whole reason we came out here was to colonize the stars, and that means overcoming any problems that outer space might throw our way. I’m not going to turn around and go home just because we’ve had a bad scare. Besides, the truth is that there’s no safe place in this whole star system, right?”

Jack nodded. “That’s correct. The other three planets in this star system are no safer than this one.”

“Evacuation still sounds like a good idea to me,” Doug said. “Couldn’t we at least evacuate until Jack fixes the problem and then come back?”

“We can’t evacuate,” the mayor said flatly. “All of these anomalies are messing up subspace and keeping Jack’s kronolator from working. Sure, we could round everyone up and load them into the Behemoth, but without a faster-than-light drive it would take a thousand years to get back to Earth. We are all trapped here until Jack fixes the problem.”

“Is that true?” Reynolds asked.

Jack nodded. “I hadn’t thought about it before, but yes, it’s true. That’s why the Liberty wasn’t able to land – its drive failed when it neared Epsilon Eridani.”

“So it looks like our lives are in your hands,” Doug replied. “We’re counting on you.”

Jack let out a deep breath. “Ok. Irene and I have a plan, but there’s a catch. In order to build my quantum singularity device I’m going to have to take the Behemoth into space and cannibalize its parts. She’s the only ship we have, and the singularity can’t be located anywhere near Myra.”

“Do whatever you have to do,” the mayor replied. “I don’t care what it takes and I don’t need to hear the details. We wouldn’t understand them anyway. Just go out and get it done. We don’t have a lot of time here, Falcon.”

“He’s right,” Doug replied. “We’re all behind you on this. If there’s anything we can do to help just let us know.”

A chill went through Jack as he scanned the room and saw the anxious look on everyone’s face. Even the mayor was too frightened to be hostile. They really are counting on me, he thought. The question is, do we have enough time to fix this problem, or will another wormhole strike before the singularity is operational?

THREE HOURS LATER JACK found himself standing in the mayor’s office. Since Patrick Gamino was the colony’s official leader he had been given a luxurious office in Star City’s administrative sector. As the entire city was located underground there were no buildings; instead, Jack Falcon’s atomic earth blaster had been used to excavate the network of tunnels and rooms that comprised the colony’s various sectors. The administrative sector was actually quite small, being composed of just a handful of rooms, but the mayor had gone out of his way to get the largest one assigned to him.

The administrative sector had been placed on the level that was just below the surface. The colony was home to more than 6,000 people and went as deep as 12 layers underground, but Gamino wanted his administration to be located as close to the surface as possible. He would never say why he asked for this, but Irene suspected he wanted to be as close to the surface as possible so he could escape if something went wrong.

Jack had arranged an emergency meeting with the mayor as soon as he returned to the colony. The mayor was reluctant to meet with the Falcons, but he eventually agreed to hear them out as long as Fenton Reynolds, the station’s chief science officer, was there to evaluate their claims. As soon as Reynolds joined them Jack and his wife presented the information that Eliza had given them. They were careful to not reveal the source of their data.

“This is why we’ve been unable to predict the solar flares,” Jack finished. “They’re not caused by the sun’s normal cycle! These black holes are the source of the problem.”

“A likely story,” the mayor scoffed. “I think it’s much more likely that you just don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Your findings are very unusual,” Reynolds said. “I was not aware of any black holes in this vicinity. Is there a way to independently confirm your findings?”

Jack thought for a moment. “I could configure the sensors on board the Behemoth to scan for these types of anomalies. In fact, that’s probably not a bad idea.”

“It’s a waste of time,” the mayor snapped.

The science officer ignored him. “Let’s suppose that we were able to reproduce your findings, and let’s further suppose that all of your conclusions are correct. What do you suggest we do about it?”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Jack replied regretfully. “These black holes pose an imminent danger to the entire planet. We’ve been lucky so far but our luck is starting to give out. A single rogue wormhole could easily fracture this planet and cause it to disintegrate! I’m afraid we have to abandon the colony.”

Reynolds’ eyes grew wide. “Abandon the colony! We can’t do that. Do you realize what you’re saying? We’ve spent years building Star City and have invested countless millions of dollars! Evacuation is just not an option. The board of directors would never approve of that. The Barclay Group demands a return on their investment into this colony.”

“Didn’t you hear anything Jack said?” Irene asked. “If a wormhole hits this planet we’re done for! How do you plan on keeping the colony together when Myra is broken into tiny little pieces?”

“I just find this impossible to believe,” Reynolds said. “After all, if these black holes really do exist then both Myra and the black holes have coexisted for countless ages! If the situation is that unstable then why wasn’t Myra destroyed a long time ago? Its continued existence argues that there is no threat.”

“I don’t have all the answers,” Jack confessed. “Maybe something about the situation has changed recently. Maybe something’s happened to the black holes, or maybe there’s some other factor we don’t know about. What I do know is that the situation is no longer stable. This planet is in incredible danger, and if we don’t do something soon–”

“Preposterous,” the mayor said. “Simply preposterous! Where did you get this pack of lies, anyway?”

“You’re missing the point,” Irene said. “We’ve got to do something while there’s still time!”

“Your solution is too extreme,” Reynolds replied. “After all, the only actual danger we’ve seen so far are a few solar flares. Even the last one was unable to penetrate the ground and reach Star City. As long as we remain underground I believe we will be fine. I would certainly not support evacuation until more compelling evidence presented itself.”

“You don’t understand,” Jack said sharply. “By the time ‘more compelling evidence’ presents itself we’ll all be dead. You can’t wait until after the planet is destroyed to evacuate!”

Reynolds shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jack, but I just can’t support such an extreme action, especially based on such flimsy evidence. It just does not make sense.”

“Enough!” the mayor shouted. “This meeting is adjourned. Now get out of here!”

Dejected, Jack and Irene returned to their small one-room apartment. When they got inside Jack sat down on the couch. His wife sat down beside him and put her arm around him.

“I just don’t know what to do,” he sighed.

“Ignore them,” Irene suggested. “You knew before you set foot in that room that they weren’t going to listen to you. The mayor was never going to agree to evacuate the colony no matter what you told him.”

“But this is a terrible place for a colony! I wish I’d thought to run subspace scans of the area before we built Star City but this whole situation just never occurred to me. I mean, I understand Reynolds’ point. The Barclay Group really has invested a lot of money into this colony – and for that matter, so has Falcon Technologies. I know evacuating it would be a huge loss and I really hate to abandon it, but it’s a lot better than staying here and getting killed.”

“I agree with you, honey, but Pat has a different perspective. He probably thinks you’re still out to get the Gamino family and that this is just some plot to destroy his life the way you destroyed his brother’s. I doubt he would say that in front of Reynolds but he does tend to think that way.”

“I guess,” Jack sighed. “But what do we do now?”

“We do what we always do – we find a way to save the day. You know what the problem is and you know that the colony isn’t going to be evacuated. The real question is, how do we protect the colony from these rogue black holes?”

Jack was silent for a few minutes. He stared off into space. Irene could tell that he was deep in thought so she said nothing. Minutes ticked by. After a while Jack grabbed a pen and a notebook and began rapidly jotting down equations. Irene glanced at them but they didn’t make any sense to her.

“Do you have an idea?” she asked.

“Just a minute,” Jack replied. He picked up his slide rule and began running some numbers.

Irene realized her husband was engulfed in the problem, so she stood up. “I’m going to fix dinner. Is there anything you’d like?”

“That’s fine – thanks,” Jack said absently.

Irene smiled and shook her head. Some things never change, she thought.

After dinner Jack continued making pages upon pages of notes, and worked far into the night. He then slept for a few hours and got back to work. Just before noon he tossed his pen and notebook onto the table.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “I have an idea but I’m not sure we can do it. There are a few problems that we may not be able to overcome.”

“Tell me about it,” Irene said. “How are you going to save the colony?”

Jack paused as he tried to find a way to put his thoughts into words. “Let’s say that you live in an area that has a lot of thunderstorms, and you don’t want lightning to strike your house. What are you going to do?”

“Put up a lightning rod,” Irene replied. She gasped. “Jack! You want to put up a lightning rod for wormholes?”

“Exactly. The whole problem is that these unstable wormholes are being spawned at random, just like lightning. What I want to do is give them something solid to connect to – something that is much more attractive than a random location in this star system. I can’t stop the black holes from doing what they’re doing, but if I can focus their attention on a location far away from Myra then that will be just as good as shutting them down.”

“So how are you going to do it?” Irene asked.

“I’m going to create my own singularity,” Jack replied. “Only, unlike a black hole, this one will be tuned specifically for the purpose of creating stable wormholes. I’m hoping that, like a lightning rod, it will attract all the activity in the area.”

“How are you going to do that?” Irene asked. “I mean, after all, the core of a singularity is hidden behind an event horizon. You can’t really ‘tune’ something that you can’t get to.”

Jack nodded. “I know. But there may be a way around that. You see, if a singularity spins rapidly it can, in theory, become a ring-shaped object. This will create two event horizons – an outer one and an inner one. As the object spins faster the two event horizons will merge and shrink toward the singularity itself. Eventually they will be drawn inside it and expose the singularity to space.”

“Does that actually happen?” Irene asked dubiously.

Jack shrugged. “Well, the math works out, and if loop quantum gravity is true then they could even exist in nature. I’ll admit it’s all pretty theoretical right now but it’s our best shot at fixing this problem. If I can build a series of ring-shaped quantum singularities and tune them to create stable connections to our local black holes, that should, in theory, stabilize the area – provided this invention of mine is located far outside Epsilon Eridani. I don’t dare try to build this on Myra.”

“Ok,” Irene said. “I’m following you so far. But how do you plan on building this singularity generator?”

“That’s the hard part,” Jack sighed. “If we were back at Falcon Technologies on Earth I could just call up Dad and have him machine the parts for me. However, we’re on Myra, and laboratory equipment is extremely limited.”

“It wouldn’t be if Daniel could get here,” Irene pointed out.

“But Daniel can’t get here until we fix the wormhole problem. No, we’re going to have to do this on our own, using whatever parts we can scrounge.”

Irene frowned. “This machine you’re proposing requires a lot of energy, right?”

Jack nodded. “An incredible amount of energy. In fact, it requires an order of magnitude more energy than this colony can even generate, or will be likely to generate in the future.”

“And doesn’t it need to be built out there in space?”

“It does,” Jack admitted.

“Well, you know, we only have one spaceship on Myra. And, as it turns out, that spaceship has a really huge fusion reactor, and it’s got all kinds of equipment on board that you could repurpose.”

“I know,” Jack said. “The Behemoth. Yes, it would do the job. But there’s absolutely no way I could get approval to do that!”

“Maybe you could,” Irene argued. “Look. All you need is a temporary solution until you can get the Liberty here. Then you can build something more permanent, using supplies from Earth. Once the permanent solution is in place you can bring the Behemoth back to Myra. You’d only be using the colony’s ship temporarily – probably for just a few months – and when you’re done with it you can put it back in working order. No harm done!”

Jack nodded. “That could work. But I’d still need to get approval first. I just don’t believe the mayor would ever approve of this. I’d probably be laughed right out of his office.”

“You could always present your case to the colony,” Irene suggested. “The mayor may not trust you, but most of the colonists do. If you could get their support then maybe you could pressure the mayor into–”

At that moment the couple felt the ground start to rumble. Moments later the room started to shake.

“An earthquake!” Irene shouted.

Jack shook his head. “That’s impossible! Myra is a geologically dead world. It doesn’t have a layer of magma under the crust – that’s why it has no magnetic field. Plate tectonics aren’t active here and there are no fault zones.”

The room started to shake even more violently. Dishes fell to the floor and books fell off of a bookshelf – and still the shaking increased. Jack realized that they were in serious danger.

“We’ve got to get out of here immediately,” Jack shouted over the noise. “This colony wasn’t designed to withstand earthquakes! If these rooms collapse–”

In the distance the couple heard an explosion, followed by a loud siren. Then the power went out and the room became completely black. But the quaking did not stop.