Weightless

By Anthony Van

What does one do when consciousness is recovered and you work out that you’re on a huge space station? Why you’re there, what your role is and how you ended up wet and alone is all a mystery. Cal spends some time reorienting his mind and recovering from an unprecedented attempt at piracy. His special skills, previously a badge of honour for him, fade into the background as he is submerged in a battle to overcome an unknown enemy and his personal faith crisis.
In this realm of weightlessness and mechanically induced gravity, Cal was made aware that his life had no substance. Yet God, the infinite all in all, drew him near with inexorable ‘gravity’, through treachery and adversity. It was the reality his character gained through developing humility that made Cal more attractive as a person and in the eyes of others.
Chloe, who valued the importance of authenticity rather than popularism, battled her father’s distaste for the risk-taking trouble-shooter, as she sought to bridge the differences between her and Cal. It didn’t help that the space magnate and his daughter were the targets of the conspiracy that kept bringing the two together.
What transpired was a rescue that tackled the hazards of Mars’ base and the hostile environment before culminating in stages on the lunar surface and in orbit of Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony Van
• Release date: Jun 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463340462

Anthony Van

What does a retired teacher do? Especially a teacher with a hyperactive imagination and ingrained work habits. Well this one writes. And being a Christian, each novel I have written necessarily is pieced together from a Christian perspective.I have a broad range of interests which include science and technology, mathematics, travel, sports and the interrelationship of people. Much of what intrigues me about people is that some pursue truth with the determination of a bloodhound while others almost ignore existential ideas and while away their short time spent on earth being distracted by people or pleasures or possessions or power.Writing is a hobby. It allows me to research and self educate, and it also permits me to refine my perspectives of concepts existential and theological.

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Weightless

Published by Anthony Van at Smashwords

Copyright Anthony Van 2018

2nd Edition 2021

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorised retailer. Thank you for your support.

Chapter1

Incessantly, the pinpricks of lights swept by before his eyes. Some bright discs, some sprinkled like glitter and often, clouds of suffuse glowing mist went past, like a backdrop by some celestial graffiti artist running amok with a can of luminescent paint. He was cold. Curled in a huddle lying in a puddle of water, arms wrapped about himself trying to stop shivering; he wondered how long he’d been gazing out at the immense cosmos. Cal couldn’t work it out. Where was he? What was he doing? Why was he soaking wet and shivering?

He was shaking violently. Getting moving, getting dry, they were priorities. He concentrated on things he knew. His name was Calvin Dorner. What else? The rest was hazy. He was in space. It must be space because every rotation showed only stars. It occurred to him that he knew about space. Orbital speeds and gravity constants were no mystery to him. What was his job? It eluded him. Why couldn’t he remember?

Sitting up, he looked about. Either side of him there were large tanks. He was on a narrow walkway between the two. At his feet there was a guard rail around a ladder well. At about half an earth gravity, Cal estimated that he was on a very large rotating craft. The opposite view port showed the huge globe of the Earth. The ladder indicated a greater diameter where the centripetal acceleration would increase even more as he went ‘down’ the ladder away from the axis of rotation. He knew if he timed the rotation period, he would be able to calculate, roughly, the size of the station. Even as he thought it the word embedded in his consciousness. He was on a space station.

Looking out again, he was unable to perceive any other part of the structure. At least he could still think. Cal determined that he must be on a strut or spoke of the craft facing outward. The small view port restricted the angle of sight. It could be a series of tubes connected to a centre hub or it could be a large spinning disc, or even a torus with interconnecting spokes. He would have to explore.

Standing, still shuddering from the cold, a wave of caution overcame him. Something was wrong. Why was he alone? Where were the rest of the crew? He looked at his dripping outfit—grey coveralls with a CTSS logo. He knew that was Communication & Transport Space Systems. There was a utility belt with electronic meters, communication devices and, what appeared to be, a specialist toolkit. The devices and tools all appeared to be unaffected by the water. Their design suggested they were air tight and sealed for exposure to the vacuum of space.

Cal’s shoes and socks were placed next to a ladder attached to one of the tanks. A domed space helmet was sitting next to the shoes and socks.

I guess that makes sense, he muttered to himself. The circumstance that was implied was that he decided to swim in the tank of water, so he removed his footwear. So why did I keep my clothes on? He made a face; consternation, bewilderment were the words his face was expressing. Cal concluded he had been in a hurry to get into the water. Did he use the helmet to be submerged as much as possible? The germ of an idea arose in his mind. Solar wind, cosmic storms, a deluge of charged particles could be avoided, or at least mitigated, by being immersed in a large volume of water. Is that what happened? Surely a large space station would have a radiation shelter surrounded by gold foil or other interference material and a strong electrically induced magnetic field?

He was thinking clearly enough, why couldn’t he remember what had happened? With shaky legs, he ascended the ladder against the tank. A large polypropylene screw lid was placed next to an opening to the tank. He looked in.

Confirming that the tank was filled with water made him smile wryly. Cal hoped that water quality was monitored and treatment ensured its purity. He replaced the lid, jiggling it till the large thread engaged, and then tightening it. Slipping back to the walkway, he considered his priorities and options. Dry clothes were up there along with finding out what was going on and what he was doing out in space.

He had to think creatively. If he could anticipate the dangers it would avoid possible dire consequences. So, he had identified solar flares as one possible cause of his dunking. Maybe some crew violence or a mutiny had caused him to hide. Mm…the shoes are a bit of a giveaway, he murmured. People searching would have seen those.

What else? Malfunctions, radiation leaks, breaches to the structural integrity of the craft and evacuation scenarios all provided no obvious explanation of why he should hide in a water tank.

He grabbed his shoes and socks and put the helmet on his head so he could devote his full attention to climbing down the ladder that extended the length of the spoke. Tentatively, Cal eased his way down, rung by rung. Quiet was essential. The silence about him drew attention to any errant scrape or bump. Small recessed diodes provided the necessary light in the pipelike tunnel.

After sixty steps down he came to a small platform. This larger viewing port provided his first sight of the station’s structure. He was now a little over halfway out to the rim of a large torus. About two thirds of the way out work had begun on a smaller, but still substantial, tube forming what would end up being a secondary torus. The size of the spinning station was staggering. Cal guessed that, taking into account the distance he’d already travelled, the structure had a diameter of about a kilometre. There appeared to be five large tubes connecting to a cylindrical hub, and five smaller spokes including the one he was in. Each of the smaller spokes had nodules which, he suspected, all contained water storage tanks.

There was a vague sense that none of this was new to him. Cal studied the large central hub. There were ten docking turrets on the side he could see. In essence, the station was shaped like a gigantic toy spinner. The slow movement of the centre meant spaceships docking would have little trouble matching the motion. That whole cylindrical pod of possibly ten or more levels would be the site of experimentation requiring weightless conditions as well as being the nexus for all transports.

The outer ring appeared to be far enough out to produce earth-like gravity. Essentially, that meant normal stresses on muscles and bones and so no physical deterioration of astronaut fitness levels. All living quarters would be down there on the furthest habitable level out. The vague notion of a storage level being the last level occurred to him.

He recommenced his ‘descent’. ‘Descent’, he thought, was a generic term that described movement to greater centripetal acceleration; and ‘centripetal acceleration’ was an accurate phrase for artificial gravity—something that mimics a force that eludes precise description. His mind was a jumble. Phantom memories of using space station jargon loitered in an inaccessible lobe in his brain.

It took an age to work his way to the main tube. In reality it was little over fifteen minutes, but he was wobbly and weak and the increasing pull on his body wearied him.

This outer tube was huge compared to the access tunnel he had exited. It was about thirty metres in diameter and had five main levels. He explored down stairs. Added to the main levels were inner and outer service spaces and a penultimate outer one for storage. He paused and wondered why all these recurring details filtered into his thoughts as if he already knew them, but the actual state of affairs still escaped him.

He tucked the helmet under an arm. The place felt familiar. It was deserted and the eerie hush of the air circulation was the only sound he heard. It was weird. Now he knew where the living quarters were. Cal had an overpowering urge to retreat from the main inside corridor and find a private room. In his thoughts a particular private room drew him. Address letters on the wall informed him he was at 1B110. He increased his pace. There were five sections of five levels and he was heading for section C.

At 1B120 the thin lines on the wall changed from two to three. He was in section C. When he reached 40, he took the stairs through four levels out. Fear and dread hovered about him. There was a threat. It was a nebulous pall gathering in his mind. He had hidden in a tank of very cold water. For some reason the critical danger had passed. A menace remained. He knew he had to act but he had no idea how or why.

There was his room—5C44. A vagrant thought surfaced. ‘One hundred and fifty.’ That’s how many people were assigned to the space station. It was a provisional, shake-down crew. And none of them knew he was aboard! When that anomaly struck him, he squeezed the bridge of his nose. Nobody knows I’m here…why? He was thinking aloud. Did they abandon the station and leave me because no one knew?"

Inside, he looked around. It was his room. The helmet was consigned to the bedside table. Finding some dry clothes, an outfit much the same as what he was wearing, he entered the hygiene module and used the shower to warm himself and reinvigorate his body. Refreshed and dressed, he sat on the bed. He wracked his brain trying to extract some morsel of memory that might illuminate his thinking. The dark shadow of disaster loomed over him like some intangible fiend. In the recesses of his mind a nagging voice warned of the immediacy of calamity; he had a role but the indefinable whispers fled like wisps of smoke.

On the table he noticed, nudged aside by the helmet, the photo of his sister, Hayley. Her mussed blonde hair and cheeky grin stirred his memories. He picked up the photo and read the back. ‘Praying for you as you audit that scary AI computer’. That was it! That was his task. He was doing a diagnostic analysis on the new Quantum Artificial Reasoning Computer (QARC). It was the quantum processing network that would idealise and integrate all the systems of the huge space station simultaneously. Its specifications flooded his mind. Sensors for all living conditions, supplies, orbital position, human biometric data and all operational functions were fed into it. Programming was designed to maximise the station’s efficiency, maintain its systems and provide optimal performance for earth monitoring, communication and longevity of operation.

Cal recalled that he was a Bohmian mechanics theorist usually working for CTSS as a consultant and trouble shooter. He had been privately contracted by Interspace to evaluate the efficacy of QARC’s programming. The computer was designed to ‘learn’ from gathered data to continuously modify operational algorithms. By meshing the whole of every system, it was meant to advise on optimal conditions.

He had boarded the immense station ‘outside its sensing system’. In other words, he wasn’t announced to the crew, he didn’t have a crew monitoring device which fed data to QARC and he had an isolated living unit as far away as possible from the ‘A residences’. But, because of his job, he did have a one-way terminal access to the computer. It couldn’t monitor him but he could monitor its workings. That was his mission.

Thank you, Hayley. You bring everything into focus, he said softly. There was an element of big brotherly affection in his gaze. He put the picture down. The issue was now, what had happened? Why had he hidden in the water tank? Glancing at his wafer-thin computer, he knew he needed to insinuate his data gathering program into the QARC system supercomputer. It might reveal how his presence became known.

He opened up the link to the controlling system. Because QARC loaded its operating history as part of its decision-making functions, all its actions would be filed and sorted and categorised with valuations referring to levels of effect in terms of ideal outcomes. The dominant communication he found was the abandonment of the whole station. QARC advised evacuation due to nuclear core instability. The history revealed the warnings became successively more insistent and ominous. Imminent core meltdown is indicated, was the bold lettered communique sent to every terminal in the station. Cal noted that it was accompanied with blaring sirens and instructions about the safest mode of expediting the evacuation.

That was why he had left his safe haven. He had to investigate for himself what had been going on. He recalled running into two humanoid robots and frantically retreating out of sight. They had been demanding he identify himself. That’s what must have caused him to run and hide. The details were still a misty memory.

Automatically, he checked the status of the reactor, bypassing the main computer and reading directly off the reactor computer. Temperatures were fine, power was minimal but being generated optimally. It was running normally. What are you up to QARC? he murmured. Cal examined the video library. He flicked through time intervals till he arrived at the evacuation. In the record of events, several of the servo robots, under instruction from QARC, were assisting the crew in boarding shuttles four, five and six. The computer’s survey of camera locations confirmed the deserted corridors. Then one stopped. It zoomed in on Cal, himself, exiting the coms hub. A message flashed underneath, ‘unregistered intruder’. He had glanced at his own wrist device which relayed QARC’s activities and then stared at the camera. A graphic appeared overlaying the video, showing the computer applying its facial recognition procedures, with his features plotted and the dimensions recorded. Robots were summoned to isolate the unwanted interloper to maintain the integrity of the station.

That’s why they intercepted him. The mechanical extensions of the computer were seeking to quarantine him. He knew the program prevented injury to humans but the machines were quite capable of detaining people, in this case to remove him from disrupting operations, or prevent harm to crew members of the space station. He remembered now. He had run to a main hub arm, taken a lift seat to the hub and then rapidly went out again on the small service tube. The halfway airlock provided the helmet and, frantic about being caught, he foolishly had chosen the water tank as the best short-term concealment. Leaving his shoes outside the tank he had hoped was irrelevant to the robots who were searching for a human fugitive with particular facial dimensions. Although maybe now, links between shoes, the location and his disappearance were being woven into the growing code of the quantum computer.

The water had been colder than he had expected. His stay, submerged in the tank, was determined largely by his understanding of the programming parameters guiding the computer. He had to give the robots time to travel every corridor and tube and link that data with all the video surveillance. Normally half an hour would be sufficient. However, Cal took into account the logic of the quantum processors. The search would be unresolved. It was likely it would be repeated.

The question ‘Why?’ continued to echo as he watched recordings of the humanoid robots striding along storage levels and examining areas not covered by camera angles. What would cause a false alarm to be triggered and then QARC to act on it despite there being no evidence that the nuclear reactor had problems? The plot of an old movie had him weighing up the possibilities. Was QARC turning rogue? Could it, independently, interpret its coding to take control of the station for its own misconceived ends? Cal hadn’t been involved in the system design but he knew instructional errors could occur, and even though it made decisions based on data, the dominant operating rules should be a failsafe to prevent QARC from enacting routines that would be harmful to the crew or the mission.

He was tempted to start analysing the coding which had led to the current situation. Three shuttles had departed and he was left with a malfunctioning quantum computer. As he continued to view video logs, he was shocked to learn that he wasn’t alone. Another camera view showed eight crew barricaded in a maintenance section. Three females and five males were huddled together. It appeared QARC was restricting temperature control and air supply. He read the instructions the computer was feeding them.

The space station is at risk. You must evacuate on shuttle 7. Your presence is inhibiting optimal operation.

This was contrary to operational stipulations. For some reason the computer was creating its own operating principles. ‘Was that possible,’ Cal asked himself. Or, had some malicious programming infiltrated the controlling system? Whatever the case, he had to rescue the crew stranded in the maintenance sector. Reprogramming and redefining QARC’s restrictions would have to come later. The question dogged him though; the cumulative learning modules within the processor should be directed by immutable strictures governing decision making. The welfare of human crew should always be paramount. That was usually a given when designing quantum software.

Taking his wafer-thin device, he attached the Velcro on the back to his chest. Leaving his quarters, he then went down one flight of stairs to the outer extremity of the torus. In the corridors between storage modules there were access hatches to all the utility cabling. He opened the particular access hatch he was at to the confines of the outer service level. A narrow rail trolley ran around the whole circle enabling easy checking of cabling and fairly smooth, quick access along the station’s circumference. Manually, finding a master control box, he disconnected the chain of cameras that monitored the service level. He added to the complexity of the fault by detaching a data cable, reversing a switch and separating a connection behind a circuit breaker. Bots were capable of fixing simple single faults and would attempt to coordinate two glitches simultaneously, but he supposed that three was beyond them. Human initiative was required to perceive the possibility of intentional impairment and predict multiple acts to incapacitate the circuits.

Cal sat on the trolley and engaged its pedal geared propulsion, aware that the computer would sense any use of motorised travel. Pushing pedals with a steady rhythm allowed him to rise through four gears. Every fifth of the circle was a mandatory air seal. These had to be opened to pass through and then closed. They were the only restrictions in the outer service space because pressure hatches isolated this level from the others. He knew the upper levels had emergency pressure doors every third of a sector—which was about two hundred metres.

In the last six hundred metre stretch, the structural ribs of the inner pressure hull flashed by in a blur. With a quarter of a kilometre to go he allowed the trolley to coast, braking gently over the last fifty metres to his destination. He had ridden to E sector and that’s where he disembarked. QARC could possibly sense the trolley movement and wonder who was moving. It meant he had to hasten before a robot responded to a query.

Carefully entering up into the lowest functional level through an access hatch, he looked around. Cal snuck through two storage units before searching a third storage pod. If his information was correct, portable battery packs were stowed in this unit. Once located, he linked three in parallel and lodged them in a backpack, holding an electrode in each rubber gloved hand. On each electrode tip he had sheathed the metal with another insulating glove. Now he was ready.

There was a broad corridor between the storage area and the maintenance workshops. Stairs initially followed the curving wall to the inner levels, closer to the hub. They then cut back inwards. He pondered on his tactics. It would be best to neutralise each robot individually if he could. A short circuit across the trunk of the machines, where the main electronic processors were situated, would either fuse their circuits or throw a circuit breaker. The latter would be preferable. He cracked open the door and saw two robots at the exit on this side. A dextrous, mechanical hand clasping onto the handle was all that was required to secure the room. He imagined there would be two on the other end of the workshops as well, performing the same task.

This meant a reassessment of his strategy. It was unlikely he could sneak up on two of the automatons and he wasn’t about to meddle with the controlling program; that would alert the computer’s anti-hacking software and QARC’s fuzzy logic decision making might block his input stream. His incursions would have to be far more delicate.

The solution to decommissioning the robots proved to be anything but delicate. He withdrew to the previous storage module where a remote-control mechanical lifter was housed. This was used to transfer heavy loads from stores to where they were required. Strapping on the battery pack arrangement he rehearsed how he would manipulate its lifting arms to contract around the torso of the robots. A careless action and he would short circuit his lifter. Placing a large vinyl apron on the mechanism would give it some insulating protection. Priming the lifter to grasp the slightly open door with the third of its four extendable arms everything was rechecked. He was ready.

Speedily backtracking to the previous corridor and stairwell, Cal climbed one level and cautiously walked through a hydroponic growing module as long as the three storage modules below. He oriented himself to sight the storage module door down one level of stairs. Cal reversed the lifter using the controller. The door opened and immediately both mechanical guards pivoted around to gaze at the appearing lifter. QARC clearly had no pre-set procedures for dealing with random machine activity, and its cumulative learning would be shallow in the area of threats from another machine. Both robots stood inactive as the lifter approached.

It wasn’t until the outstretched alloy arms clad in rubber neared the first machine that the words, Danger of contact, emanated from the small speaker in the upper chest. A blue arc crackled from wire ends through the metallic encasement a puff of smoke disclosed the fusing of microcircuits and a loud pop suggested terminal damage to a servo motor. The other robot was receiving data from QARC suggesting leaving the door would prevent a repetition of the disabling electrical discharge. Too