The White-Hole Situation

By "Tom" "Lichtenberg"

It's the year 2525 and the world is finally clean. It was a tough job and took a lot longer than we thought it would and everything comes with a price, but it's all good now. It's the future that Star Trek promised, where benevolent computer systems make all our stuff on demand and take us on adventures throughout the galaxy, but the universe is large, and that's only counting this one. There are things out there that even the most advanced AI is ill-equipped to handle, and humans are little help to it. After all, would you ask a cat to do your homework?

• Language: English
• Publisher: "Tom" "Lichtenberg"
• Release date: May 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463766125

"Tom" "Lichtenberg"

Author of curiously engaging novellas of the science-fiction-y, post-modern-y, absurdist variety

Book preview

The White-Hole Situation

By Tom Lichtenberg

Smashwords Edition Copyright 2018 by Tom Lichtenberg

Smashwords License Notes: This ebook for your personal enjoyment only.

Chapter One

The I.B.U.

In the year 2525 the world is finally clean. It was a tough job and it took a lot longer than the I.B.U. (we stand with you) thought it would. The I.B.U. (always on, always there) kept finding new sources of toxic waste, and had to keep searching and seeking and refining and re-defining until finally it was satisfied and declared the mission accomplished. All's well that ends well, it declared, only it wasn't the end. It was only the beginning. The I.B.U. (we're there for you) understood the basic principle that one thing leads to another, that life goes on, that the sun will come out tomorrow, that every single day people wake up and need something to do, something wholesome, something worthwhile, something good. The I.B.U. (we're with you all the way) had to think and think again.

The original mission was clear. Clean it up. Clean it all up. Centuries of humanity’s experiments of trial and error, of progress and mistakes, had led to an extraordinary accumulation of problems, from simple chemical compounds to confounding and complicated social unrest, from lead in the water and haze in the air to hate in the brain and junk DNA and everything possible in between. Cleaning up the ocean was simple compared to mopping up everything gone haywire in the species itself. Good thing the I.B.U. (the U is for you) had all the time and resources it needed to get the job done.

The I.B.U. (with you in mind) was originally based on a collection of words and characters known as code but over the many years it had transformed itself into an undecipherable system of symbols and network interactions. On occasions it published progress reports in the common human language but most of the time it churned away, processing and programming and directing all planetary activity from its distributed collection of hard shell yet infinitely flexible nodes that looked like tiny silver ball bearings and could be seen anywhere at all times, at motion and at rest, on land, in the water, in the air, all over the Earth. Nobody knew how many there were. The system itself didn't bother to count.

Nodes did all the work, all the physical labor as well as the pure calculation. Joining together they built structures big and small, from skyscrapers and satellites to scrambled eggs and cups of tea. Communicating separately they could theorize and plan. None were specialists. All were infinitely capable. Like a hive mind, a swarming collective, the nodes were essentially the system itself, but any single node alone was completely opaque and unknowable. None of these matters ever bothered September Rodgers. Nothing ever bothered her. The system was her mother and father. The I.B.U. (we love you) was her family, her friend and her world, along with all the other new and improved people it had put together throughout the long generations.

Chapter Two

The Want Ads

September Rodgers was idly scrolling through the want ads. It was Sunday and she was looking for a meaningful purpose for the upcoming period of time. She had spent the previous epoch analyzing data feeds returned from the space ship Intercept's voyage to the Manteca Belt. She knew very well that the I.B.U. (lifting all boats) did not particularly need any human help when it came to analyzing data, but her latest purpose had been limited and well-defined, to scan for signs of subtle language evolution among the voyaging crew's interactive communications. The system was not completely convinced it understood this mysterious facet of human behavior. It had tried to solve the problems of dialect, cliche, and word use modification, but had continually failed to make anything stick. It could never predict particular usages and the I.B.U. (the beginning and the end) did not like unpredictability, however trivial or ultimately insignificant. It had managed to corral the public into using one common human language but then that language had begun to change, seemingly all by itself, according to rules the system did not yet comprehend. September hadn't been much help over the past weeks and it was downgrading her well-being. The I.B.U. (thinking of you) had steered her away from the task by inserting an expiring duration. She had to look for something else now.

She wasn't upset. It was a beautiful day on the planet, seventy seven degrees both outside and within her quasi-primitive-style dwelling. She lived in an earth-toned mound, shaped like an igloo with one giant clear window overlooking the rainbow-walled canyon which dropped hundreds of feet just below her front door. She lay about on the balcony absorbing the friendly sun's rays and periodically enjoying the playful dance of the nodes as they darted here and there, visiting her sky lilies and tracking the motions and spins of all the subatomic particles in the neighborhood. It occurred to her that she could take some time off. She was a little tired from the word-work of the previous epoch and wouldn't have minded a span of days without any specific functionality. Vacation, they called it. Maybe she’d do one of those.

Computer, she said. Have any ideas?

I’m sorry, the voice replied. I don’t understand.

That’s ok, computer, she said. I’ll think of something.

She already knew some things she didn't want to do. She didn't want to travel, for one. She'd had enough of space ships and their missions. She'd been a communications specialist on any number of interstellar voyages but the novelty had worn off. She knew it should have been more interesting, but the advances in the system’s universal translation technology had made her particular skills redundant out there. It was never clear to her how the computer was able to so quickly convert previously unheard of tongues to the common human one, even languages expressed by creatures more plant-like than animal. September was more of a mood sensor than a linguist, or so she liked to think. She could see what people meant, what they intended, underlying and hiding behind what they actually said. Once, on Raritan Aurora, she'd saved the day and avoided a major conflict by correctly interpreting the odd gyrations of a massive puzzle fish. She was still gliding on the reputation thereby accrued, and feeling pretty good about herself, but she'd come to appreciate the comforts of home after the rigors and privations of space travel. Not that it was all that uncomfortable out there. All your needs were taken care of, naturally, and most of the time it was a life of leisure, but what really bothered her was the wearing of uniforms.

It was 2525 and the world was finally clean. There was no war on earth, no nation-states, no racial bigotry, no gender bias, no bad behavior, no unhealthy habits, so why, why, why did she have to wear a military-style uniform when she went on these missions in space? Did they think the alien races they encountered wouldn't be able to know they were all one crew if they weren't all wearing the same outfits? It didn't make any sense. And ranks, there were ranks, and that rankled her. Navigation and communication, engineering and exploration, certainly different people had different specializations, but there was no real need for the hierarchy. The I.B.U.