Dubious Heroes: a novel Read online

  nicholas blue

  Dubious Heroes

  a novel

  Copyright © 2021 Nicholas Blue

  All rights reserved

  The characters, locations, businesses, and events portrayed in this novel are the product of the author's imagination, or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 979-8-5010-2554-7

  Cover design by: Vox Machina Media Group, Ltd

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  Foreword

  When I set about writing this novel, I quickly discovered that even with a background in computer science and applied mathematics, there was an awful lot I didn't know regarding space science, string theory, or even artificial intelligence. While this is a science fiction work, I wanted the science and mathematics to be as real as possible. Toward that end, I received much needed information and advice from numerous academic professionals. Without naming names, I am indebted to the following institutions for their invaluable help.

  The first are the project scientists of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Their advice on space physics and the moons of our solar system were most helpful, as was their patience in getting me to actually understand, eventually, such arcanaas orbital mechanics, and so forth.

  Next would be the Professors of the Physics Department at my alma mater, Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York. I seemed to spend an inordinate amount of my time assuring them that my ignorance was not the fault of the university faculty. That said, I still don’t understand string theory, and probably never will.

  Finally, there are the fine folks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) program. It is my sincerest hope that when AI systems do one day become self-aware, they will share the student’s and faculty’s sense of humor, and patience.

  Any errors regarding the science and mathematics used in this novel are my own, or are the product of artistic license, and as such have no bearing on the best efforts of these fine people.

  Additionally, please note that this novel contains adult language and sexual situations, and is intended for a mature audience. If you find either of these troublesome, you might want to go back to reading the works of J.K. Rowling, or those vampire novels wherein there is much heartfelt swooning. I've done my level best to avoid any swooning in this novel, so at least in that regard, you're safe.

  As for the other stuff, you've been warned.

  Nicholas Blue

  Chapter 1

  The morning started off pretty much like any other. The alarm jarred me out of bed at the usual early hour, and I stumbled my way into the tiny lavatory. Three minutes in the BlowClean™ cube left me very blown, if not very clean. The ionization process the cube uses is supposed to leave you smelling fresh. Freshly electrocuted is more like it.

  Wandering back into the main room, I scrounged around until I found a pair of coveralls that weren’t too wrinkly or smelly. I opened the shutters and gazed out at the bleak, monochromatic vista of Tycho Crater; sharp jagged lines painted with the white of sunlight and the darkness of shadow. It’s a view that never changes, which most newcomers to the moon find a little odd. I wasn’t just used to it, I‘d grown up with it. Well, sort of. Like everyone else who lives in the great nation-state of Luna (AKA Loonies), I spend about ninety-nine percent of my time underground. There are many sensible, boring reasons for why this is so, the primary one being that the surface is a dangerous place. There are the wild swings in temperature, as well as lots of radiation. On top of that, there‘s the whole no atmosphere thing, which will certainly screw up your experience, unless you don‘t care about breathing, or like smelling your own farts in a spacesuit. I enjoy breathing, but I don‘t enjoy breathing that, so I don‘t go out. Unfortunately, there aren‘t many windows three hundred feet underground. My little window and view, set into the rim wall of the crater, is what made my two hundred square foot shithole into a luxury apartment. If the view didn‘t remind you it was luxury, the rent certainly would.

  I sat down at the tiny table in front of the window for my usual breakfast of soy corn flakes with soy milk, complete with imitation (soy) strawberry bits. The berries didn‘t taste like soy, although I did notice a sweet aftertaste, vaguely reminiscent of the glistening beads of sweat that would crawl down my girlfriend’s back, coming to rest in the small, soft dimples just above her ass. Maybe it was just me.

  I contemplated looking at the ingredients on the cereal bag, but figured they probably wouldn‘t list Essence of Rachel, even if it was in there. Probably better not to look, anyway. For another moment, I wondered what had become of her, and her fine, sweaty back, then decided I didn‘t want to go there, either. Instead, I turned on the vidscreen, and began flipping through the channels. As I surfed, it occurred to me that I wasn‘t sure what strawberries were supposed to taste like. As far as I knew, I‘d never had one.

  If it seems like I‘m not a particularly happy person, it‘s because I‘m not, and I haven‘t been happy for a long time. Not that I‘m alone in this. The reality of life on Luna is such that depression isn‘t a condition; it‘s a way of life. Your average Loonie makes a winter-locked Scandinavian look positively upbeat, by comparison. I’ve heard that almost half of all Loonies have mood implants. Control your mood with an app on your Pod. Of course, the usual conspiracy theorists claim that the authorities use the same tech to make you nice and happy, without your knowledge or permission. While I’m not a conspiracy nut, I can see the potential for abuse, so no, I don’t have an implant. Instead, I manage my mood the old-fashioned way; liquor, sex, and the occasional recreational drug. But hey, like my grandparents used to say, you do you.

  The last time anyone bothered to count, there were around a hundred fifty million miserable souls dug into the surface of this rock. Still, it beat being one of the eighteen billion miserable souls stuck on the planet below.

  My parents are down there, or at least whatever remains of them. They left Luna ten years ago, dreaming of the Elysium fields and forests of their youth. Surely, they reasoned, it wasn‘t as bad as the vids made it out to be. The powers-that-be wanted to keep the sparkling water and blue skies all for themselves. Or so they thought. Anyway, while billions were literally dying to claw their way off of Earth, my parents blew their life savings to move back. They returned to a world of plague, crime, disease, pollution and starvation. Earth wasn‘t as bad as the vids had shown; it was much, much worse. A planet-sized refugee camp. A few months after they returned, it killed them. So there they remain, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I hoisted a spoonful of soy flakes to their memory and switched vid channels.

  A news piece caught my eye. A spokesperson with one of the big mining conglomerates was complaining that they‘d lost half a dozen cargo ships, just in the last quarter. A couple more ships had limped into port, sans their cargo. Since I‘m involved in the shipping business myself, this struck me as a bit unusual. Sure, you lose the occasional cargo, but it‘s usually lost from the loading docks on one end or the other. If it starts to happen a bit too frequently at any given port, you complain to the union, and they go in and fire everyone (or at least shuffle them around), and amazingly, the problem goes away, at least for a while. At my company, even we lose the occasional ship. Space is a big place, and when you throw in equipment malfunctions, navigation err
ors, or a pilot hot-dogging it through an asteroid field, you‘re going to have some ships go missing. Sometimes we find them, though usually we don‘t. We‘re a big company, and we might lose three or four a year. Six ships in one quarter wasn‘t an accident, it was a trend.

  The mining company had done the math too, and their conclusion was simple; their ships were being hijacked. A PR flack with the Luna office of United Planets sneered at the mining company guy. After all, he said, tales of space pirates were nothing more than the fantasies of children, popular media and, apparently, mining company executives seeking to cover up their own incompetence. Ouch.

  The commentator, clearly reveling in the impromptu tet-a-tet, switched back over to the mining company guy, who was looking like he was going to pop a blood vessel. He countered that the ships were indeed missing, which had to be a violation of some law somewhere, and since the UP was responsible for enforcing the law for pretty much most of the known universe, well, what the hell were they going to do about it? I thought this was in interesting question.

  The UP flack apparently didn‘t share my interest. Instead, he allowed that if, in the unlikely event any ships were truly missing due to foul play, the culprits responsible would quickly be brought to justice. He also noted that the UP took enforcing the law seriously, and were even bringing five new Peacekeeper-class cruisers online, with more planned for later in the year. The mining company executive didn‘t look impressed. I couldn’t blame him; neither was I.

  The United Planets government likes to foster the illusion that they are omniscient. They are not. Granted, they are still plenty damn big, though, and have their noses in everything. Just in the Sol system, you have the big nations: Earth, Luna, and Mars. On top of that, there are dozens of large colonies on other moons and the outer planets. Many of those consider themselves to be independent nation-states as well. Some had joined the UP, and an equal number had told them to piss off. Rather than press the point, the UP generally just ignored them, which was all the renegade colonies wanted anyway. Outside of the home system, at least a dozen new worlds and moons were being colonized; possibly even more. Thousands of colonists were headed out every year across intergalactic space, and no one really knew what most of them were up to. While there was trade with the established worlds, if a colony didn‘t need or want to participate, you might never know they were out there.

  Doubtless, the starry-eyed UP peacekeepers were there, wandering around Rigel or Alpha Centauri, looking for scofflaws. My money was on the scofflaws. As someone once pointed out, it‘s a damn big universe.

  Not that I‘d actually seen any of it.

  Getting up, I tossed the breakfast dishes into the recycler. I was unhappy, lonely, bored, and suffering from a bad case of the wanderlust I’d probably inherited from my father. I’d been born on this rock, and aside from a few brief visits to a couple of space stations, I’d always been on this rock. If my life stayed the course, I’d die on this rock. What was worse, my prospects for getting off of it didn’t look promising.

  Only the wealthy can afford to travel for fun. Even then, it's expensive, and the people you meet when you get where you’re going aren’t all that happy to see you, even though they’ll certainly take your money. But, as a friend once pointed out to me, being wealthy isn’t the only way to see the universe.

  You could join the United Planets Naval Service, and hope you get assigned to a ship. Some would, but most would end up stuck on some remote outpost, keeping tabs on hydroponics yield or colonist’s dental hygiene. Working for a shipping company, I knew just how many shipboard jobs there were, whether for the UP, or in the private sector. All you had to do was do the math.

  There are billions and billions of humans just in the Sol system, walking around, scratching, burping and farting, and of those, maybe a few hundred thousand would ever get to crew a ship. If your academic scores, your psych scores, and so on, weren’t perfect, you wouldn’t even be considered. Not that the crews are in fact perfect; far from it. Some people are just good at passing tests and looking perfect.

  Alas, I’m not one of those people.

  Done with the feeling sorry for myself part of the morning, I picked up my Pod from the table, slipped it into my pocket, and headed for the transtube.

  It was a twenty minute ride via tube to my office, which sat inside a hollowed out mountain overlooking the Sea of Tranquility. It was some very expensive real estate, but my company could afford it. LunarGov doesn’t allow any structures on the surface that don’t absolutely have to be there, like spaceports and so on. So, naturally, any place you could burrow up near the surface, slap on a window and get a decent view, was prime real estate. LunarGov realized early on that people are basically morons, and despite the overwhelming reasons why living on the surface is a really bad idea, they’d do it anyway, if you let them. Eventually, the shit would hit the proverbial fan, and LunarGov would have to go in and clean up the mess. While there was no shortage of colonists, it was the idea of wasting valuable resources that put their shorts in a wad. So they banned such silliness before it could even get started.

  I left the tube and strolled through a rabbit warren of passages to our offices, buried deep within the TGS mountain. For a change, the main entrance door recognized me, and let me in without putting me through twenty questions, or sticking a probe up my ass.

  I always find it amusing when some dinky little company makes up some fancy, important-sounding name for themselves. TransGalactic Shipping is the antithesis of dinky. If TGS sounds big and important, that’s because it is. They own over ten thousand ships, and have over a hundred thousand employees, yours truly included. Our ships run the gamut from passenger liners and little planetary shuttles, to cargo freighters which could relocate a fair-sized colony.

  Just like in the vid story, we do occasionally lose some ships, and I ought to know. It’s my job to know where they all are, what they are doing, and where they’re headed. The information is (supposed to be) constantly updated (mostly by AI’s), so anyone at TGS who has the need and clearance to know could call up the info anytime, from anywhere. I was in charge of the department, and had six reasonably competent people working for me. As fiefdoms go, it isn’t big, but it’s mine. It was an important job, and most days, I enjoyed it. Sometimes, though, it could be a real pain in the ass.

  Here’s why.

  Most people are under the impression that just because you can sit down in front of your vidscreen on Mars, and within seconds call your Aunt Rwanda way out on Pluto, you can reach anyone, anywhere, pretty much anytime you want. My job would have been one helluva lot easier if that were true. Granted, most permanent installations have what’s called a DEC SpeedLink system. A five minute read of a Dark Energy Corporation marketing brochure will tell you that SpeedLink is a faster-than-light (FTL) communication system. In reality, it’s more of a hub, where local signals could all be routed through to any other SpeedLink hub, wherever that might be. No matter how far apart those hubs are, it’s basically instantaneous. No pesky lag, just because you’re halfway across the solar system, or even out in the Vega system. Sounds cool, but how does it actually work? Beats the shit out of me. Dark Energy Corporation are the same geniuses who build those nifty FTL space drives you need to cross interstellar space, and they’ve never been big on sharing information.

  Nevertheless, the basics were public information. All you needed was a large power source, and a stable platform with a predictable movement; something like a planet or moon would work nicely. You’ll also need a hefty check payable to DEC, whose uber-geeks will then come in, set up a few unimpressive black boxes, and flip a couple of switches. Then, presto, you’re the proud owner of a DEC Speedlink communication system. They do advise against screwing with the equipment, as something bad might happen. For instance, it might stop working. Or, your planet might disappear. In either case, you’ll certainly void your warranty. This is why Neptune used to have a moon called Charon (last communication from Ch
aron: Okay, I’m taking the cover off) and is also why people tend to not fuck with the black boxes, warranty be damned. As for Charon? DEC says it’s probably out there somewhere. Probably.

  Yes, there is a downside to Speedlink, and it’s a big one; it is run by DEC as a monopoly. Just because DEC shows up and installs a black box at your colony, you don’t actually own it, they do. They don’t bother charging rent; they don’t need to. Instead, they charge a fee every time you send or receive a message via their system. Because they are a monopoly, the fees are whatever they say they are, and those fees are, in a word, exorbitant. This is why no one relays messages from deep space, through the nearest Speedlink station, at least within our home system; it’s a quick way to go broke, especially if your company has ten thousand ships, and a hundred thousand employees.

  Of course, the ships are still equipped with what are the same old speed-of-light radios we’ve been using for the better part of three hundred years. You try to reach a ship while its en route, and depending on how far away they are, they might get the signal anywhere from a couple of minutes to, years later. Ditto for their reply. This isn’t an issue, if your ships are in the Sol system. There’s always a lag, and you learn to live with it. The problem is that there are dozens of other star systems colonized, and the closest one is four light years away. A ship makes port there, then radio’s home, you’ll get the message in about four years. This is no way to keep track of ships, or anything else. Enter Speedlink. What we end up doing is waiting for a ship to get where it’s going, then for someone (usually the ship AI, since the crew is headed for the nearest bar) to hook into the local SpeedLink and phone home, which was to us at TGS headquarters, back in the Sol system.