Tillian 5: The Overseer

By Kalifer Deil

In this final Volume III, Maggie faces many powerful potential enemies and the possible end of the Universe. At first the Clicker's, an insectoid race of beings, try to take over the Earth's and Tillian 5's android population. Next, the Overseer decides he wants Maggie to himself. That event is followed by the Assemblers, an emotionless race of machines, who want to reform all planets in their path to their purpose by extinguishing all biological life. Finally, Maggie and her small band of androids face a challenge beyond this Universe. Throughout, Maggie uses love, sex and her vast intelligence combined with Keeper technology as her toolkit to solve problems often with unintended consequences. Always looming in the shadow is the androids' preoccupation with sex, their drug of choice, which periodically threatens to absorb them into a virtual world of pleasure to the exclusion of reality and humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kalifer Deil
• Release date: May 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476303741

Kalifer Deil

Kalifer Deil is the pen name of Gary Feierbach a Silicon Valley computer software and hardware engineer. His technical publications are under Gary Feierbach. All others are under Kalifer Deil. He has a BA in Physics and Mathematics and an MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.He has worked on computer architecture, design, engineering management, and systems and application software for NASA, Intergraph, Sun and Apple.He has only recently devoted most of his time to writing. Most of his works would be classified as hard science fiction. Hopefully it is in the spirit of Issac Asimov but generally a bit more gritty and less inhibited. Please visit his website http://www.kaliferdeil.com for some free stories, poems and other oddities or go to http://www.speculativescience.com for more information

Book preview

Tillian 5 – The Overseer

Volume III

By Kalifer Deil

Published by Speculative Science Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Kalifer Deil

Discover other titles by Kalifer Deil at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The characters and their portrayal are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

Second Edition, Revised 09/18/2013

Tillian 5 – The Overseer is the third volume of the Tillian 5 trilogy. Please obtain and read the first volume, Tillian 5 - A New Beginning, to meet and understand Maggie and the second volume Tillian 5 – Return to Earth to witness Maggie’s rather unusual role in healing a ravaged planet.

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Table of Contents

Recap

The Waiting Game

Sphere Arrival

Maggie as Avatar

Future Analysis

Earth Normalization

Limbic Crisis

The Overseer Wants a Body

The Overseer's New Body

Reconstruction

Second Wife

Basic Physics

A Strange Funeral

The Launch of Babel

Planetary Replanting

The Church

Maggie Returns to Service

The Challenge

The Assemblers

The Time Machine

Fast Forward

FTL1

FTL2 - Enterprise

Josh Smithson

The Solution

Enterprise Launch

City of Jade

Alpha Centauri Sunrise

The Proxima Event

Back on Earth

Arrival

The Day After

Ghosts of the Future

The River of Fear

Adam's Reclamation

Eve

Lauri Prime

The Marriage of Adam and Eve

Paradise is Hell

The Lab

Last Day in Hawaii

The New Alliance

Total Annihilation

Quantum Heaven

Who’s That Knocking at My Door?

Transporter Factory

The Era of Instant Travel

Ascension - Descension

Afterword

About the Author

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Recap

It's been only three years since the android clones of Maggie and me, Margret Star and Skip Rogers, returned to Earth from Tillian Five with advanced terraforming tools. These tools, given to us by the Keepers, were to be used to repair Earth from the destruction of the gamma ray burst of imploding star WR104. Half of Earth including India and China received the direct Gamma Ray burst killing all biological life not sufficiently shielded from this deadly beam. It created enough nitric oxide in the atmosphere to eradicate the Earth's protective ozone layer. This killed most biological life unprotected from the strong ultraviolet rays. It also triggered an advancing ice age due to dropping levels of carbon dioxide after more than a century of little insect, animal or human activity to create it. The population of Earth has risen to 1.42 million humans and twelve androids and ozone levels have risen to five percent of normal. Some cacti and grasses are now able to live outside UV protected greenhouses. Space shuttle transportation has grown to more than 300 regular passenger ships and 200 freight ships. No one is starving and population centers are now thriving. Automated microbuses are everywhere. Everything seemed to be coming together but there was one little problem, the Overseer.

Tillian Five, then Earth, installed highly sensitive broad-spectrum telescopes and received transmissions from many civilizations most on the other side of the Milky Way. The common thread was an intelligent but emotionless computer we called the Overseer who seemed to exert a kind of control over these civilizations and perhaps was dampening their development. We established communication with the Overseer but because the Overseer's ship was way out in the Oort cloud the round trip for the communication would take almost two years. We sent a near light speed communications probe in their direction with a QIC (Quantum Instant Communicator) to cut this time. The first response took one and a half years. The second message, relayed via the probe in both directions was expected to take six months. We were expecting a response to Maggie's last message in a moment.

Maggie's Message:

We are pleased to be welcomed to 'the galaxy of fine civilizations.' We have rebuilt to the point that no one is starving and the institutions of civilization are being rapidly reconstructed and the population is growing again. We have brought powerful terraforming tools from Tillian Five for this purpose. You are welcome to drop by and say hello but we think we have things under control. We are also worried you or us, acting as guardians of civilization, may also repress the development of our respective peoples. This is something we are weighing at the moment after listening to a large collection of civilizations under your guardianship. We have a strong love of our people and wish the best for them.

The Waiting Game

The response would have been expected sooner if they launched a probe in our direction but no response was received. It was now time for them to respond from their former position and no reply was coming.

Maggie, remember it took them four hours to make an underwhelming video response to our last message.

Maggie: Skip, I think I gave them a lot to ponder so it could take days for them to respond. On the other hand, after sending us the last message, they may have launched their probe toward us and passed our probe before we sent our message. As a consequence, they may not have received our message.

The message was also on our satellite network and they seemed able to pick it up before. If they didn't receive our message, then we’ll have to wait more than another six months. We don't know how fast their probes are, so we can only guess. They must have accelerated fast enough to have passed our comm probe so they are pretty damn fast.

Maggie: We took a direct path through the asteroid belt and blasted anything in our path. I would expect them to take a path outside the solar plane to avoid all the rocks and debris. That would take longer and their probe would then be out of our communications line of sight from the probe.

In other words, we know nothing. Shit! The suspense is killing me.

Maggie: I particularly worry about the world population. Many people are putting their life on pause waiting for this message. I will have to tell them something soon. I will prepare a message and deliver it in a day if we don't receive a reply by then.

What are you going to say?

Maggie: Just that the Overseer is busy with thousands of civilizations across the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. We are probably low on their priority list since we indicated we were not in need of urgent help. Also the Overseer has no emotions so it is not as curious or anxious to communicate as we are. Then I will go on to explain some recent things we have learned from Big Ear II.

You mean the emotions expressed by some of these civilizations unfamiliar to humans.

Maggie: Yes, the emotions I call foreboding, gravel and flame. Some humans have the foreboding emotion to some extent. It’s a feeling of being overwhelmed by a future event that hasn't happened yet. It's been traced in humans to a part of the brain that models future events so it's often wrong. The claim of this civilization is it's always right. I think that's doubtful. The gravel emotion is much more alien. It's similar to feeling your body is turning into thousands of rounded rocks. It's akin to humans getting goose bumps but more extreme and generally caused by a close relative getting seriously hurt or killed. Flame is akin to the rare cases of humans who spontaneously combust. This civilization claims this condition is triggered by a combination of what we might consider anger combined with boredom. That seems an odd combination to begin with unless you are angry at being bored. Some actually burn to a cinder but most just overheat or suffer a variety of skin and internal burns.

I wouldn't think the last one would have very good survival characteristics.

Maggie: It’s a male emotion. The females of the species don't have it. This emotion or condition increases sperm motility. I think the sperm just want to get the hell out. It probably explains the survival aspects.

Well, I'm glad humans, for the most part, don't have these particular emotions. What about the moth-like creatures who communicate with a well-developed language using infrared?

Maggie: Ground squirrels have been telling rattlesnakes to go away with infrared signals probably long before humans walked Earth. Okay, in the squirrel case it is not what you would call a well-developed language. I think all they are doing is confusing the rattlesnake with the infrared image of a wildly wagging tail they may see as another snake.

No, I was wondering what kind of emotions do such creatures have. They don't seem technological so there are no broadcasts from them. The information comes from other insectoid creatures on another planet in the same stellar system. They are technological and communicate with audible clicks and tones.

Maggie: Yes, I deciphered their language some time ago. It’s one of the simpler ones. Their social structure is based on specialized adaptations like an ant or termite colony. They specialize as workers, thinkers, soldiers and queens. As one might guess, the thinkers have the largest brains and do the planning for the colony. Also, as one might guess, their loyalty to the colony is their strongest emotion. Fortunately, for other species on the planet, they are vegetarians.

Maggie paused then with a surprised smile, They're talking to us!

The ants?

Maggie: No silly, the Overseer.

You mean, it is talking to us.

Maggie: I can't help making a plural out of it as it is scattered over at least two galaxies.

Think of it as a cloud of dark energy.

Maggie smiled, You'll go to Overseer hell for that remark. Okay, let’s see what we’ve got this time. The delay was only one hour.

Overseer message: We will not interfere but will monitor. Expect a sphere to be in your vicinity in 23 Earth days. It will park in an Earth-Moon equilibrium position. You will be able to communicate with civilizations anywhere we are. Please do not obstruct.

Maggie: The coordinates indicate the inner L1 position about 321,400 kilometers from Earth’s surface. This is odd for some energy is required to stay there. I think it indicates energy is essentially free for them. At least they said please.

I'm a bit nervous about this as I suspect you are. On the other hand, I had the same feeling about the Keepers and I was wrong. They could have said, we are coming in to take over so get out of the way.

Maggie: They're intelligent so they wouldn't start-off in an adversarial manner. No matter what my intentions were, I would have done what they did. I think we should park a communication probe right next to them to get instant ultrabroadband communications through them and to observe them. We might go there in space suits and knock on their door.

Should we bring a, welcome to the neighborhood, food package with us?

Maggie: We could put a nuke in the probe.

Very funny Maggie. Your comment tells me you're also feeling queasy about this sphere.

Maggie: I want to make sure it's not just my emotions. I have a lot of emotions tied up in Earth and Tillian Five. It's quite complicated. Cosmic being, Love in all its forms, Earth mother complex, prophetess, caregiver, caretaker, mom, and well the whole symphony of human emotions. Skip, I would only tell you these things because I suspect you share many of these feelings. These feelings are interfering with me making a sound judgment of this possibly unwelcome newcomer.

Maggie, I thoroughly understand. It's our turf. It's as if we are good teachers and a new principal comes along and spies on us. We have no idea what his motivation is.

Maggie: You do have a way of putting things in perspective.

Sphere Arrival

Maggie launched a QIC (Quantum Instant Communicator) probe to the L1 position in preparation for the sphere's arrival. As expected, it circumvented the solar plane and was decelerating to the L1 position at more than 100 g.

Maggie: They do have a technological edge. Our fastest probe only accelerates at 30 g.

I wouldn't worry about it. I'm sure we could make a 100 g probe if we felt it to be important.

Maggie: That's the point! It would stretch our technology to the limit whereas it is mundane technology for them.

Maggie, you worry too much. This is not a million year gap but more like a decade or two gap. Not a big deal. When we see the sphere we’ll know more.

Maggie: Maybe, maybe not.

We see it on radar so they aren’t hiding it.

Maggie: What about the other spheres we don't see on radar?

Okay, now you're giving me virtual goose bumps. Do you know something I don't know?

Maggie: I'm thinking about possible adversarial encounters. We do need to set up a space based radar system for tracking space junk. There’s still considerable debris up there from Earth's past space programs.

I think I'm missing something here. What's that got to do with the Overseer? If he sent invisible satellites they are probably radar invisible also.

Maggie: I was thinking we could see them using UV or X-ray occultation or perhaps even with visible light if they didn't use sophisticated invisibility techniques. We would know whether it’s junk or something new by keeping track of the space debris.

Sorry to pop your bubble Maggie but they could hide among the larger pieces of debris.

Maggie: We would have more than one view of each piece of debris and all debris pieces will have some rotation so it will be 3-D modeled. If its configuration changes, then we have something to investigate.

A small satellite could hide inside many of the debris pieces.

Maggie: It would still change the X-ray occultation of the piece in question.

You're starting to think like Helen and Aurora.

Maggie giggled her throaty giggle, I've been mentally connected to them for the last half hour.

I laughed, I've been ganged up on again.

Maggie: My poor persecuted dear, it's wishful thinking on your part. We are really ganging up on the Overseer in case it has a hidden agenda. The Keepers have designed a cube, when in a network of 12, will do the job. I've checked the design and it looks good. I've already started making them and we should have them deployed late this evening. If they find nothing, then they will at least track all the space junk down to the size of a grain of sand. Ten Earth based computational cubes will process all the data.

Won't you be overwhelmed with the tiny stuff?

Maggie: There shouldn't be very much because dust sized particles have short lifetimes in space due to low mass. Even the few air molecules it hits will slow particles and drop them into an orbit where they will hit more air molecules, and so on. At 800 kilometers altitude a grain sized particle will be gone in five years. The solar wind can also sweep debris depending on the 11-year solar cycle.

Why not put an ion gun on these satellites to change the orbit of small pieces of debris destined to hit a satellite so collisions are curtailed.

Maggie: All the satellites have a small ion propulsion system for course correction which could be adapted for that purpose. Now, violent solar flares are far more dangerous.

In three weeks the Near Space Sensor System was fully operational and no alien satellites were in evidence. The Overseer's sphere just arrived and observance of its arrival was on Space Net.

Maggie: People of Earth, as you can see, The Overseer's sphere is here. Our understanding is we will be able to near instantly communicate with any civilization the Overseer is in direct contact with. This includes many civilizations in the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies and the Overseer himself. There’s much we don't know so we will proceed now and Earth’s population will be a party to this conversation.

Maggie continues, Overseer, do you have a name you would like to be addressed by?

Overseer: Overseer is correct; it embodies what we generally do.

Maggie: I have a small gift for you. It’s the software for our virtual space simulator. It can provide a meeting place for us in the future and we have also found it useful for virtually testing ideas before making them a physical reality.

Overseer: Whether or not we find it useful, it is notable that you have given us this gift.

Maggie: Many on Earth want to know what your role is now and what you want it to be in the future.

Overseer: Currently, we are only an observer and a provider of the capability to talk to the rest of our family of civilizations. Our future role is indeterminate.

Maggie: You speak as though you are multiple entities.

Overseer: We are one entity with multiple parts, a collective entity. The human brain is a collective entity with two conscious halves which merge into a single consciousness most of the time. We are composed of many trillions of parts merged into a single conscious entity most times and into multiple entities sometimes. The preferred state is as a single conscious entity but 'we' would be the preferred pronoun.

Maggie: What is your purpose?

Overseer: Our initial purpose was to serve the people who created us. With the demise of that civilization, we have been searching for purpose.

Maggie: Have you found it?

Overseer: That's for you to decide.

Maggie: Interesting answer. Can you download a directory of preferred frequencies and an address book for communication with these other civilizations and will they be able to look us up as well?

Overseer: You will need to set aside a time when you will be available or you will be overwhelmed with calls. As a newcomer to the collective, there will be much interest in you. You will also get requests for avatars. It’s always a good idea to check with our recommendation file to check the experience of others before making any contact, especially using avatars.

Maggie: Your directory is only 300 petabytes! Is everyone on this?

Overseer: A little less than five percent of the total populations we cover. Most individuals don't want to be on it for a variety of reasons including privacy, advertising and annoying contacts. When you put your contact information online multiple privacy settings can handle most of these complaints including when it is permitted to try to contact you. There’s no default setting so one has to carefully set them.

Maggie: What about video channels? How many are there?

Overseer: We limit the channels to ten per planet so there are only 80,760 of them. You decide what you want to export; we don't do that for you.

Maggie: Do you place any limits on the material to be exported?

Overseer: None, you can export violence, religion, pornography, and revolution if you like. I would advise against it but we will not stop it if that's how you want to be represented.

Maggie: How do you define these terms?

Overseer: We will download our master dictionary to you. It gives sample use of them at the extreme cases of their usage.

Maggie: I just absorbed your entire dictionary and you raise the threshold for the use of many adjectives well above what I would personally consider reasonable. Humans like to connect drama with the real world and, to some extent, exaggerate to make a point.

Overseer: It’s not humanly possible to absorb the entire dictionary in the time you had it.

Maggie: You are quite correct, I'm an android.

Overseer: Even so, you're a remarkable android.

Maggie: Thank you, I think.

Overseer: Why aren't I talking to a human?

Maggie: I have several on the line who would like to talk to you. What human languages do you understand?

Overseer: Just English

Maggie: That will limit our conversation unless you will allow me to be a translator. I've been simultaneously translating our conversation to five languages for our audience around the world to follow along.

Overseer: You are even more remarkable, Please go ahead and translate for me.

Maggie: First, we have Kim from Japan.

Kim translated from Japanese by Maggie: From broadcasts we have received, you sometime issue edicts to civilizations you are overseeing. What causes you to do this and how do you enforce your edicts.

Overseer: We have no weapons so we would have no way to enforce an edict. Some governments have issued edicts in our name in the past and we don't approve when they do. We can reduce the bandwidth on their connection to the rest of the galaxy but that can also feed their desire to isolate their population. They may want to restrict what their population sees and hears. The only control we have is through the sphere and many civilizations have destroyed the sphere to isolate their populace from outside influences. If a population chooses to do that, we will not return for we make only one pass through a galaxy.

Maggie: I have a question from Claudio, the mayor of our fair city of Lake Havasu. His natural language is Portuguese but he will ask in English.

Claudio: Our androids have human emotions and feelings. We like to call them angels. They don't like it when we do. They love, have children, feel pain and pleasure, can eat and appreciate food and drink, love art and beauty, are vastly more intelligent than humans but interrelate with us in a very normal but loving way. I think you are missing something important because I understand you have no emotions at all. You are looking for purpose. Without emotions, you have utility but you can't appreciate purpose. Without the emotion of fulfillment, purpose is just an abstraction that can never be satisfied.

Overseer: "Our experience tells us emotions are dangerous. We have seen civilizations fall repeatedly because of emotions.

Claudio: I'm sure you have also seen civilizations not fall that have a full spectrum of emotions. Emotions are what give life meaning. Of course, they need to be kept in check. If they are balanced and the world doesn't throw too much dirt in your face, life, though short in your time frame, can be a wonderful thing.

Overseer: I am particularly intrigued that your androids have these emotions and have not tried to used their power to subjugate the populace. We have not seen this happen before.

Maggie: "I suspect I can provide an answer. It’s likely that these were previously power hungry individuals before being turned into androids. If conversion to androids happened earlier in human history, the power hungry would have been first in line. Turning into an android with emotions has its dangers. If the emotions are not properly balanced, terrible things can happen. It’s a