The Link

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. I heard them scream and so did the team. “The Team” is the ground crew, quantum-entangled with the crew of the star-ship Good Chance en route to HD 40307. We heard everyone scream at the same time, then nothing. Control shut down the quantum enhancer and pulled us out of our links in less than thirty seconds, then sent us to the med-center for an early shift check out.

The buzz as we filed out to the examination rooms; “What happened? Did you hear it? It was all of them!” Each of us went to our designated exam room attended by a psychologist, physician and engineer. This was a normal shift check-out for us. While we are human, we were not born from a natural or artificial womb. We and the Good Chance crew were bio-printed as adults and entangled with one another. We have memories of parents and childhoods, but these are of people who volunteered to have their minds copied for the benefit of humans like us who were made for a specific purpose. We will live long enough to complete the mission and then retire.

As usual, I checked out fine. Shaken by the experience, but not yet processing the significance of what just happened. Satisfied, the three specialists left me alone and I sat at the small table in the room where I would be debriefed after the shift by the admins on duty.

Ten minutes for the exam, twenty more alone – that’s unusual. The three admins came in, but not the regulars.

“Running late?”

“Obviously there was a problem.”

“Obviously. What happened?”

“We were hoping you and the team could enlighten us. There were no warnings on any system, onboard or on the ground. What did you experience there?”

“A chorus of screams, then silence.”

“What were the circumstances? Where were they?”

“Not in the ship. Stars and cold, black space. One moment, data were coming over, environment fine, and the next, no ship then no contact.”

The admins looked at each other. The one doing the talking told me to go to Mission 7’s conference room. Linkers usually don’t go to conference rooms unless the mission had some new parameters and this would classify as such an occasion.

Half of us were already there. 7001, “Annie,” was looking at me.

“Bill, was it the same for you?”

“You mean, screams in null space? Yes.”

It was the same all around. 7007, 7008, 7009, and 7010 came in over the next half hour and had the same experience. Ten minutes more until 7011 and 7012 joined us with the same story. The room went quiet with a lot of wrinkled brows and silently shaking heads.

The three new admins came in with the Mission Director, who called the meeting to order.

“It appears that Mission 7 has experienced a catastrophic failure. The nature of this event is still undetermined. Each one of you received the same information prior to link breakdown and termination. No instrument, no measurement, no image, and no system modeling ground-based or otherwise suggested there was a problem.

“Six other missions are en route to nearby star systems and twenty more are in their planning stages. It is extremely important to understand how this failure occurred and how it could be avoided on current and future missions.

“It is impossible for us to survey the circumstances of this failure directly. The information we need to determine the final disposition of the Good Chance rests with our quantum entangled resources in this room. The twelve of you will be retired when the investigation concludes. There are extenuating circumstances here that will require us to put far more power into the quantum link than you were expected to endure. Because of this, participation is voluntary. If you do not wish to be subjected to these procedures, you may opt out.

“Questions.”

India went with the obvious question, “what does retirement look like?”

The Mission Director remained standing at the podium while looking at the floor at his feet and one of the admins stood up and outlined how Human Resources can counsel us about integration into society, life options, and choices we would need to make once we have been discharged from our program duties.

He concluded with, “after assessing interest on all the shift teams, we’ll determine if we need a group presentation, or if individual counseling will suffice.”

Doug went for the jugular. “What kind of power are we looking at and what will it put us through?”

The Mission Director motioned to the second admin and surrendered the podium to him then sat in a chair against the wall, hands clasped, leaning forward, looking at the team.

“What you have experienced in the program so far has been what we call ‘conversational’ or ‘over-the-shoulder’ linking with actual starship crew. A shallow mind-link that maintained the privacy of thought as you oversaw and helped problem-solve with the crew. At the same time, we were able to watch and hear what you were exposed to and put more resources on a problem if necessary. We need to do more, which means we need to deep dive into the entanglement which could pull up a lot of personal and non-relevant stuff as we sift for missed clues.”

Frank was staring at the admin like a humorless stone gargoyle when he blurted out, “they’re dead.”

The admin took a deep breath and said, “Most likely, yes. But, as you should know, at the quantum level, time runs forward and backward. So, all the information is already present in your entanglement. We just need to extract it so that teams of experts can look for things that could tell us what might have happened.”

Elbow on the table, stroking his chin, Harry squinted at the admin and asked, “so what is the risk if we do link with the power turned up?”

“We don’t know. We’ve never done this before.”

Pin-drop silence and folded arms filled the room. The Director walked to the podium and the admin returned to his seat.

“I hope you all understand how serious and important this is. Your shift witnessed the catastrophe. We will have this conversation with all the shifts because their information may also be important, but we really need your team in this.”

Eve spoke up, “why not take just one volunteer?”

“For the reason that we have twelve on a team; you are a quantum block-chain that validates the data as it is decoded. We can lose some, but one is not enough to ensure that we are getting things right.

“If there are no more questions, I will answer a question hopefully most of you should be thinking about; when will we start? The answer is, at the beginning of your next shift. You have approximately twenty hours to make your decision.”

The Director and his admins filed out and everyone started talking.

“If it is so important, why would they let us just go? Shouldn’t they just force us?”

“It had to be a micrometeorite too big for the shielding. At their speed, how much would it take?”

“I can’t believe they didn’t expect this. Why haven’t they tried this before?”

“Maybe they tried it and it failed. Put the decision to try again in our laps.”

“Why lie about it? They’ve never lied before.”

“That we know of.”

“What about this ‘social integration?’ The only life we know is in the project community.”

“That’s not true, we have our donors’ memories.”

“Right. How long ago did our donors live? Things change. We know nothing.”

“We know how to do the job we were made for.”

The room went silent.

“Okay, Bill, what are your thoughts on this?”

“I like this job and will miss it, now, sooner than I expected. I’d like to bring home as much of the crews’ memories as I can.”

“We all like the job. They put that in us when we were made so we would be happy doing it for an extended lifetime.”

“Well, anyway, how -”

“Bill, don’t say it.”

“What did you think he was going to say?”

“'How bad can it be?’”

The whole team went to lunch together. This never happened before. Breakfast before, dinner after a shift, but lunch was taken in groups of four and breaks individually. Groups from other mission teams looked up and saw all twelve linkers from Mission 7 get into line. Lunch turned into a scene from a wake with friends offering support to each member of Team 7. Word traveled fast in the project community.

“Really sorry to hear about ‘7.’ What are you going to do?”

“Still thinking about it.”

“I know you’ll make the right choice.”

A group of linkers from Mission 4 saw the team looking for a table to accommodate all twelve and offered the large table they were sitting at. Team 7 sat and ate in sullen silence. With no plans for the afternoon, the team remained at the large lunch table. People taking their breaks made a point to come over to the table and offer their sympathy and support.

After some time, Karen suggested, “Let’s go topside and sit on the grass.”

‘Topside’ meant going to an Earth-like habitat. This was Titan and it was too far from the sun and too cold to actually go to the surface for a casual walk. The habitat had artificial sunlight, artificial gentle breezes, and even artificial clouds floating across the sky. Perpetual perfect weather with freshly cut grass, birds, and other creatures to balance the biosphere.

“What if we change our minds?”

“I suspect we could opt out at any time. Why would they want linkers who were unwilling to do the job? I can’t imagine it would be good for the link quality. Just say you want out.”

“We didn’t choose the job, the job chose us, and so we were created.”

“How do you think people who weren’t created on a bio-printer would think about it?”

“Do they spend most of their lives thinking about why they exist?”

“I can’t say that my donor memories provide an answer.”

“Probably edited out. We must have got what we needed and nothing more.”

“Funny how we never thought about it until now.”

At dinner and afterward, the condolences and sympathy from project community members continued. No one wanted to ever see this happen. So much effort, so much planning, so much care invested in the journey to the stars. Everyone knew there had to be failures along the way, but root causes once determined provide hope for solutions. What if they never discover the reason for this catastrophe?

Twelve team-7 members at breakfast after a restless night’s sleep. Frank sees everyone contemplating their trays and playing with their plastic utensils in their food and speaks up.

“Well, what’s everybody doing? Are we linking today?”

“Are you, Frank?”

“Yeah, I am. This is what I do, even if it makes me a drooling vegetable. Rather that than farm sunflowers on Luna for the rest of my artificially long life.”

“Is that one of HR’s suggestions?”

“Don’t know, didn’t go. I’m linking.”

“Did anyone go to HR?”

Silent shaking heads, then India volunteered, “I did. I’m going back to the link. I want to know what happened.”

Silent nodding heads; twelve teammates with ten minutes until link time.