It has now been several months since the Cinder departed Anaxon. They burned through their aft FCCs over the course of several weeks, and entered the drift phase of the journey, where the ship would ride the momentum of the launch through the void until it was time for the reverse burn. In the dead of space, the only indication that the ship has hurtling at over half the speed of light were the occasional flashes of light that sparked off the bow shield - single atoms and molecules of dust and gas detonating into plasma from the immense speed of their collisions.
The red fields closed over Axy's console, now much more populated with controls, as B-Crew took command. With those cataclysmicly lethal levels of acceleration now behind them, and the Zenith Device powered down, the ship Coreyards were now available for zero-G training. Instead of remaining on the virtual bridge for observation for the remainder of their shift like the rest of C-Crew, Axy and Kai-Val retired to the aft Coreyard to step deeper into her training practicums on Nav-Eye, the navigation software.
For hours, they rolled through scenarios in which she would have to put into practice what she was learning about ship maintenance, orbital mechanics, decision making, communication and reporting, etc. They virtually piloted the ship in disoriented states of zero-G and dizziness, as though recovering from disaster; they charted parabolic courses around stars and moons; they discussed vital ship maintenance routines.
“...and so, like, when you've got more than 45 degrees in side drift that close to a sun, obviously you have to changeover to your lateral magnetocores or you're going to funnel particles right through your nav computers, which CAN lead to corrupted code strands...” said Kai-Val.
“...but the changeover takes at least and hour to cooldown from, right?” said Axy.
“Exactly. And that's why it's better to be over or under that 45 degree mark, but not loiter around it, because if the system keeps switching back and forth, you're going to overheat the heat sinks...”
“...which means you now have reduced heat management altogether, which can lead to an overheat cascade effect in that particular cooling system”
“Exactly! Yeah, you got the hang of this.”
“It's... definitely a lot, but the systems are all pretty well isolated from each other, so it's not like you have to worry about ALL the cooling system if one goes down.”
“Well... yeah, I guess I see what you're saying. But actually there ARE situations where systems interact in ways you wouldn't expect.”
“Like what?”
“Well, for example, like getting corrupted code strands in your nav computer. The thing's massive, and you can only shield so many ports, there is actually a pretty good chance you can overload, like, either the long-term memory system or the processor algorithms.”
“Yeah but they're self-healing, right?”
“Well, sort of. They have secondary and tertiary backups of every code strand and processor, stored with different encryptions, so they always have multiple sources to compare to. But if it detects too many corruptions happening, it can drop into safe mode to run diagnostics until the particle field chills out. The last thing you want in a side-drift is to lose navigation control.”
“Ah, gotchya” she replied.
She looked back into the abyss of the navigation screen that was before them. Against the blackness arced cold white orbital paths and spiraling down those were more orbital paths. Data streamed out of the simulated vessels and moons and habitats floating through space, showing position, course corrections, and intent-to-move communications; grey-clad monitor windows silently logging the essential ship systems were kept out of the way of their main screen, but still visible; their shared console gently pulsed pink to indicate they were in training mode.
“Those particles can effect more than just the nav computer though, right?” Axy asked, pondering back to the orientation day when they first boarded.
“Well... technically ANY computer, but... most other systems are smaller and don't inhabit weak zones like the nav computer.”
“...but like... for instance, what happens if a VR Brain gets corrupted?”
“Oh.. you're talking about the Frailen Durin reversion case, aren't you?”
“...maybe? I think so?”
“What Astellia was talking about back in the Coreyard when we boarded.”
“Yes, that. I... am admittedly curious.”
“It wasn't that big of a deal. Basically, some guy a few decades back had taken a week off for a hack fantasy adventure when he shoulda been on duty. But, they were over staffed, and he had free time. So, when they were coring out the last of a drawf planet in an inner orbital band around Nuric, one day ol' Nuric flared up real bad, overloaded ALL their cores, and he... just happen to get the unlucky draw.”
“What... exactly happened to him?”
“Rumor has it he reverted. Investigators say he was in the middle of a part of his program where he was supposed to have a minor altercation with a bot character when the flare hit; data got corrupted, and he got trapped in a feedback loop where the computer thought he wanted to see a... sort of “slightly more aggressive” foe. Of course, this made him more defensive; which the computer interpreted as him wanting to see more aggression from the bot character... and his implant safeguards were linked to the game, too, so they didn't stop anything. Basically, his mind got reprogrammed to experience one moment of violence over and over and over again, worse and worse each time, until every part of his brain had been reconfigured to experience a super graphically violent encounter. But he pretty much lost sentience before he could really 'know' what was going on, or... really 'experience' the horror of it. So they say.”
“Geez... that sounds like... a horrible way to go...” Axy cringed. “It makes me feel like... our brains are super fragile. Especially because we're only running on secondary and tertiary magnetocores this trip haha” she chucked nervously.
“That's just part of the human weakness of only having one brain.”
They both returned to monitoring the Nav-Eye interface.
“One brain, huh?” she pried.
Kai-Val gave her a side-glance.
He obliged: “Brains are weak. They're just quark waves with too much organization.”
“I guess I could feel that... technically all matter is, I guess... but if they are weak, how do you trust your own?”
“You don't. You trust groups of them.”
“Like... governments? Communities?”
He didn't immediately answer, with a side-look as though he wasn't quite sure how much to share yet.
“The limitation on the human brain is processing power. Same reason the Nav Computer is smarter than Able or Seraph - it's got more processors. You have to fix that problem if you want to understand this universe.”
She had three conversational paths she could pick to go down at this point... ask how exactly he proposed to fix the limitations of the human brain; note that the Nav Computer wasn't a novasapien, although Turry - who interfaced with it - was; or what left he thought there was to the universe that needed understanding.
But she knew minds could already be augmented, and not desiring awkward corrections about misheard details, she decided to probe the third option.
“What do you mean, 'understand the universe'?”
“What I mean is that... all you see here... physics, materials, quantam waves - it's all just a shell. There is so much to reality just beneath the surface. So much they don't want you to know. You ever heard of the Klipp Ship catastrophes?”
“Enlighten me”
“Back when they first cracked quantum gravity and started messing around with gravity manipulation, every single star drive they made failed catastrophically. The Klipp shipyard in ancient Geteroii were the first to experiment with them. The first one they switched on allegedly had a concentrator, but it was too efficient, and it poured so much energy into the graviton field that it transmuted it into an EM field... and the magnetic energy pulled the iron out of every crewmember's blood in an instant. The second one they built pulled the core right clean out of the ship when they tested it. A crew of a hundred people got crushed in the gravitational vortex it left behind. And the third one? Warped right clean into the surface of Geteroii.”
He pulled up a search window and displayed an image of the planet Geteroii. The angle showed the continents on one side of the planet, arranged vaguely like concentric circles arranged across the majority of the face, with a very small continent about in the middle.
“That's the crater impact. Wiped out 98% of the population on the planet. They didn't have warp again for another millennia. And by then, the physics of the universe had literally changed, so you couldn't use a star drive anymore. That's why, instead of having superluminal star drives, all we have are the slower, less-efficient warp drives. Because the original star drives broke the festin' simulation, so they had to shut it down.”
She wasn't 100% sure if he was being sincere, or just messing with her, but... Kai-Val was a quiet guy. This was the most emphatic she'd ever seen him. She picked up that he was back on his conspiracy theories, although the story of the star drive kinda made sense, especially with the evidence of such devastation on Geteroii.
“Who's 'they'”? she probed.
“ 'They' are the simulators. And 'they' want to keep us in here. And 'they' created us with brains just a tiny bit too small to figure out how to get out. But I KNOW it's possible. I KNOW it. People...”
He paused.
“...it's been done before.”
She was curious and inquisitive. But critical.
“So, what you're saying is... these 'Simulators' are the ones responsible for killing off early attempts at star drives, because... their simulation wouldn't have been able to keep up?”
“Why do you think causality moves as slowly as it does? It's the minimum framerate of the environment. The fact that our universe is quantum at all is proof it's digital. The irreducible minimums of our universe are how we KNOW we are in a simulation.”
“Well... how do you know the universe outside this one is digital, too?”
“We don't. That's why we must escape this one. Evolve to a point where we outsmart them or they'll at least force them to listen to us.”
“To what end though? I mean, I don't... see any problem being 'simulated' or whatever...”
“Do you want to be controlled for the rest of your life? Do you think its right for life here to suffer in this cosmic cauldron for the twisted pleasure of some arrogant gods?”
Before she could reply to this somewhat heated response, the door at the rear of the room opened up. Yangly drifted into the room. “Get lost, nerds!” he half-jokingly shouted.
“Speaking of 'escaping the simulation'...” Axy murmured under her breath.
“Leave, Yangly, we've got another 20 minutes in here!” said Kai-Val.
“It's fine, Kai, we got all our zero-G stuff done. Let's get out of here.” said Axy.
“Why the fest do you even need to be down here? Go gum up your OWN dang pod.” said Kai-Val.
“Kai, let's just go. We're basically done anyway.” said Axy.
“I requested time here, and I got approval. Nothing else here is your business.” retorted Yangly.
“It's our business when you interrupt our training for your... festin' virtual orgies down here.”
“I want a zero-G day, I'm gonna have a zero-G day. You're just mad you don't know vendors like I do, man!” Yangly said, now at their seats, indicating for them to move.
Axy shut down Nav-Eye, and retracted their console. Both of them left the Coreyard room and left Yangly to his fantasies. When the door shut behind them, as they were about to board their transport pods back to the crew module ring, Axy asked:
“I thought all the guys down here did that stuff.”
“Some of us have better things to do.”
“Like what?”
Kai-Val paused.
“I'll let you know when we get to Yaroryn. Somebody I want you to meet. They can explain it better than I can.”
With that they departed to their living pods.
Axy felt... gross, for one, knowing she had to share a ship with people like Yangly and Bedrun and Dread, who so idolize their virtual fantasies.
But she also felt curious... curious about her conversation with Kai-Val. Admittedly, she had always wondered if some deeper level to the universe existed. And while she may not be on board with conspiracy theories of simulators or fake universes, she felt like exploring that possibility was at least more sincere than the lustful escapism most men on the ship seemed to indulge in.
