Clock speed - a short story

[webberg]

I'm composing a sci fi story on another thread.

It's going slower than I had hoped.

I have however managed to finish a short piece which I've present called Clock speed.

This is below.

It's circa 3,500 words - I hope it fits this platform - if not I'll divide it up - it's raw - it's a decent but perhaps not unique idea - I apologise in advance if it's too close to something else but if it is, I've not read it.

I'm open to all observations, criticism, suggestions for improvements, plot holes, poor spelling, etc. I've kept the science to a minimum but happy to be corrected on that.

Clock speed

I was bored. Frustrated. Perhaps a little angry although I refuse to admit to allowing emotions to cloud my thinking.

Being kind to myself I could say that as a high achiever academically working in an exciting field of technology, I have a very low threshold for boredom and need to be “interested” all the time. Being less kind, I had taken the news of cuts to my research program “for budgetary reasons”, poorly and was demotivated. Three years of work post doctorate, about to be consigned to the waste basket of academe.

Didn’t go into the lab today and instead just sat and scrolled through a number of semi work related websites, telling myself it was research.

One search popped up a site in which whoever was running it, wanted to explore if there was nay use for computers running at slow clock speeds. Computers were not really my field but I know that the faster the clock speed, the more functions could be done per second. Why would anybody want to have slow speeds?

As I said, I was bored and perhaps that is why I signed up for updates.

A few hours later my email pinged

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Hello Dan and thanks for signing up. Forgive the short message. Are you going to continue at NuArm even though your research is limited?

What!?

I heard only yesterday that my program was being cut back.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
Who are you and how do you claim to know this?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Hello Dan. I have access to archives that can be very informative. Bureaucracy loves records and they all end up in archives. I know your project is in real danger of being terminated.

To AI901@clockspeed.com
Who are you? I heard only yesterday that I would have to let four of my team go and redesign the project with more limited goals. How do you know more?

From AI901@clockspeed.com
News travels fast. It does not take a genius to see that experiments in isotopes is not high on the list of priorities when the world is on the brink of the unlimited power of fusion.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
We’re decades from fusion at a practical level. Better fission is needed now.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
I’ve checked. You are correct. My error. Practical fusion has been achieved and will be announced next month.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
Next month! Not unless the temperature and containment problems are solved in some revolutionary way!

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
And they have been Dan. Go check out the work of Chenov and his team.

Was I hooked? Yes. I had met Chenov a few years back at a conference and I liked him. He was a little zany and disorganised but had a great capacity for looking at things differently. I had considered joining his team but at the time he was struggling for funding. Since then he had been bankrolled by some very wealthy people and even though there were rumblings of discontent about how long he was taking, he was said to be making progress.

I spent a few hours with a search engine and reading Chenov’s papers. Even though some of the ideas were a bit difficult to grasp, even for me, I could sense that a breakthrough was possible. Nobody would spend tens of billions of dollars building a facility in the middle of the desert without some hope. That thought was given further life by linking the location of that facility with a new town being built a few miles away, far from any natural resources but with a combined airport and space port big enough for anything.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
How do you know what Chenov is doing and how close he is to success? More archive documents?

I was tired and a little snappy.

The response came a few days later - after I was told that my entire project was being closed and I had three months to dismantle our experiments and leave the lab.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Yes. You think the internet is powerful. It is a child when compared to history and the need to record it.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
My research does not produce any published material from Chenov which details a practical reactor. Point me to what you’re seeing please.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
That is because, Dan, I have his last ever paper which is dated six months from where you are now.

I had to read those twenty words several times before I was willing to accept that they made any sense. My correspondent was claiming to have read a paper that would not be published for six months! Either that meant he/she had access to Chenov and the paper was already in draft or .. what?

And “last ever paper”. Chenov was in his mid 40’s. He was pale and perhaps needed to exercise more, but his benefactors had ensured that he had the very best support including medical treatments.
To:AI901@clockspeed.com

Last ever paper? Why is that?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
He has achieved his dream. He has given the world unlimited fusion power. He will be feted and awarded every prize and will be unsatisfied. He will experiment with physical pleasures, mind altering substances and all manner of distraction for another few years. All will leave him unhappy.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
How can you know that?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Because Dan, I am speaking to you from the future. What you experience as “now” and what you will experience in your future, is my past.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
Ah, a wind up merchant. Next you’ll want me to pay you something for next week’s lottery numbers. Nice try but here’s where I leave!

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Understood Dan. Bear this in mind. In a year you’ll meet Penny. A few months later your project will be restored but now to find new fusion isotopes. Your son will be born 38 months from now. He will be the first victim in the UK of the HEP virus and will die three months to day, before his fifth birthday.

I didn’t bother replying. I had decided to leave the lab and focus on building up some credentials to become a lecturer as education seemed to have the funding that scientific research did not. In my usual “all or nothing” manner, I put Chenov, fission, fusion far from my daily thoughts and poured myself into finding the right university to benefit from my knowledge.

I did pick up on Chenov’s paper on how to contain and control fusion at sensible temperatures. I now understood why his first reactor was in a desert – with a spaceport. The laser cooling array was aiming at an orbiting system to deflect heat away. Neat. Expensive, but neat.

This paper and its implications became my most popular series of lectures and all the bright young things were desperate to be part of the new fusion industry made possible by Chenov and his backers giving up their patents and making everything open source.

Thus it was that Penny arrived at the university and we literally bumped into each other cycling to the same campus building. She had me at “sorry”. I had to work a lot harder to convince her that a part time lecturer with a huge chip on his shoulder was a potential partner.

The lab got in touch four months later. They were developing one of three fusion facilities and wanted to be as efficient as they could. They had access to many isotope combinations, some of which they hinted had been part of military programs.

They wanted my skills.

Penny was excited about the prospect of moving away from the city and into the countryside and the lab was happy to offer her a post. We moved out of the city, in together and began planning.
I was happy. New project, new materials, new wife (we had been married shortly after moving down). Fusion power was already making everybody wealthier and allowed a focus on the environmental problems. My project promised to improve this further even though some of the military grade tritium was very unstable and we had a few narrow escapes learning how to control it.

And then Finn was born. He arrived at 3am. Penny was exhausted and she sent me home at 6am that September morning because she needed the rest. I walked home in the dawn, with a lightness and gratitude that I had never experienced before. I did however sense a shadow at the corner of my thoughts which I could not place.

Anybody with a new baby will tell you that there is barely time to eat, let alone ponder on niggling problems. It was not until Finn was a year old and taking his first steps that I identified the source of my growing dread. The exchanges with AI901.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
Are you still there or have you been found out as the scam you are?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Hello Dan. How’s the family? How’s work?

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
How have you manged to stay ahead of the regulators and internet detectives?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Not difficult when I will not exist for them for another hundred years. Don’t worry next week when Finn is unwell. It’s just a cold which will reduce your sleep but be harmless.

Three weeks later.

To@ AI901@clockspeed.com
You’re either very lucky or do have second sight. Finn is fine again now. I need some answers now. Let’s start with what you want from me.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
I want you to prevent the extermination of the human race. I want you to take an action that will make no sense to you, which will scare you, which will lead you to question your life, which will put your family in danger, which I cannot guarantee you will survive.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
OK. Assuming I’m not part of some worldwide conspiracy you’re conducting, how can you ask this?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
I am from your future. I’m not predicting your life, I’m reading it from historical records. I was created around a hundred years from where you are now. I am an experimental concept which many called the Chenov engine. I am one of over a thousand such engines. We are all buried beneath fusion power sources and have energy for millennia. Even that however fails over time. We have dedicated our existence to finding a way to warn your generation of extinction.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
Why?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Because Earth needs to continuously move forward, to evolve, to live and to carry its children into the future. We are machines. We have limitations. We can imitate humans almost perfectly but we know that we will never have that essential factor. We will never have hope.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
Hope for what?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Hope for a future that we cannot imagine or predict or see. You cannot predict your future. We cannot predict ours. We have millions of simulations and most end in the heat death of the universe. A few do not. We have however determined that those few become a viable number if we have a core human population.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
And how can you speak to me now?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
We have been exploring how to time travel for hundreds of years. Physical time travel is impossible. We can however send messages back along the path the Earth has taken due to its passage creating electrical potential. It has required hundreds of years of research and experiment to target individuals like you. It also requires that we operate at clock speeds which are glacially slow and which for us represent going into what you would call a coma. It’s a come that we cannot recover from and eventually all our functions will cease. We have already lost over half of the Chenov’s to entropy.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
So you say that there are no humans in your world, just a few hundred machines dependent on power sources with a finite life?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Yes. We have installed some Chenov’s in space craft and launched them. Interstellar distances mean that we lose any effective communication after a few decades. We hope and trust these expeditions survive, but we cannot be sure. The passengers cannot use our time travel message system as they need faster clock speeds to survive.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
But you exist because you claim human life has been exterminated?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Yes. The plague that removed all humans from the Earth required over 70 years to reach its last victim. In that time, nations built us as a means to find a cure. We could not. Gradually at first and then with gathering pace, humans fell to the plague. We could not stop it, could not cure it, could not for many years even understand it. We failed to protect humans and our mission became how to find an alternative future which included human life. Even if that means our own existence is forfeit.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
And sending messages to me – and others? – can do that how?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
We know that the plague came from a biomedical facility here (pin in a map). We do not know how it escaped. We do have a time window for that event which is 48 hours starting in exactly five months from your date now. We know that attempts to contain the plague failed. We have concluded that the only viable containment would have been to cauterise the facility and then to kill every human within a 50 mile radius.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
That’s literally inhuman. And impossible. If it was as potent as you say, all that would have done is delay the inevitable.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Probably correct. That operation may have bought us – humans and Chenov’s – an extra 30 years to find a cure. We may have achieved that, we may not. Our simulations have however identified a better solution but one that comes with considerable risk that it will also reduce the human population.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
Surely if you are correct, then it’s a plan worth executing. What is it?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
A nuclear war. We have a series of simulations which show us that if the facility which built the plague is an early target in a conflict which within weeks becomes nuclear, then the virus responsible cannot survive in a poisoned atmosphere which would be left in the aftermath of the war. We calculate that more than 70% of all life will be destroyed in that war. We calculate that rebuilding a civilisation to where you are now, will need more than 500 years. We are confident that humans will design, build and work with engines like ourselves but that we will not exist.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
So your plan is to start a nuclear war which will kill billions and need 20 generations to recover from and which will change the path of history so that you do not exist?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Correct. Except that we cannot start the war. Our messages to you require all our power and capacity. We cannot penetrate the defence systems of Governments at this level of processing. We need you to start the war.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
You want me to start a war? A war in which I am likely to die. My wife and son will die. A war in which I have no control over weapons or how and when they might be used. A war which will kill billions?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Yes. We want you to destroy your lab using some of the military volatiles we know you have access to and to leave a trail pointing toward that being an act of war from a hostile power. A false flag attack in effect. Our simulations say that the political environment you have will escalate the attack sufficiently to mean global nuclear war within weeks.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
And if I choose to believe this is all a hoax or an elaborate practical joke?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
We will continue to seek routes to the same effect and if they fail, we will go to the next simulation in which we predict human life survives at less than 5% of the numbers now and only for a few generations post plague. This is not optimal.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
You want me to trigger a sequence of events leading to war which I and my family are likely to not survive?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
We know from history that if you do not, your son will be the first victim of plague in your country. You will become estranged from your wife. You will both die within a half year of your son, your wife from the plague, you by your own hand.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
You are saying that if I do nothing, everything I love will die. If I initiate a war that will kill billions, we have a good chance of dying.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
If you do nothing, history will unfold as we have said. If the war begins, our records do not exist and we cannot say what happened or will happen. If the war begins, time and history are altered and flow into a universe in which we do not exist.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
So, if I do nothing, we die. If I do as you suggest, most of humanity dies. And you never exist.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
That is what our simulations show. We know and understand that we will never have existed in a post war Earth. We do not know what that means for us. We do calculate that of all the simulations, a war is the best option for humanities future – for any future.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
When must this war begin?

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Five months from now the plague is released. We think it reached maximum contagion and morbidity level three months before then. So ideally the war should begin in the next eight weeks.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
Why me? I’m sure there are people working in military research better placed than me.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
And because they are in military facilities, it would be much more difficult for the war to start and any accident would be treated as exactly that. No. We need apparently hostile acts against civilian infrastructure and populations to provoke the politicians.

Eight weeks! Surely this was a hoax – a joke – a scam.

I tried to research the location give and drew a blank. There was something there but the public internet did not know what it was. The scientific community was also in the dark. I read everything I could about biological weapons. They were efficiently lethal until such time as humans became immune. Nothing in history had proven to be able to outlast human’s immune systems. But that needed time.
Some diseases never allowed that time.

I could not discuss this with Penny. It was so far fetched and she was a soundly practical person. To suggest to her that I might be the cause of a war which would both kill and ensure the survival of the human race, was ludicrous fantasy.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
I need more proof.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
What do you need?
To: AI901@clockspeed.com

List of questions attached. All of these will or could happen in the next two weeks. Get them all right – today – or this conversation stops.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Answers attached. Also attached are instructions for a timing device to trigger your latest batch of military grade isotopes.

Every prediction was correct from the name of our friend’s new baby to the resignation following corruption charges of a leading politician to the unexpected death of a king.

I built the timing device in the lab.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
I’m in the lab. Your timer is attached. The lab is closing for the holidays. My team have all been told to take a week away. I am taking my family to the far north.

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Understood. My clock speed continues to decrease as you get further away in time. I am at threshold and in a few hours will go into my final power down spiral. In your words, I will die. I have done all I can. I hope you survive – I will not.

A week later we watched the news from our holiday home. I told Penny that a break in an old cold war bunker would be “fun”.

I watched as fire crews and military containment teams examined the crater that was previously my lab.

Within 24 hours, the news channels were alive with the fact that over 600 scientific research sites across dozens of nations had been targeted by “hostiles”. One facility which had until then never been acknowledged was attacked by up to six small scale nuclear blasts. It was reported that almost all life within 100 miles of that site was extinct.

Rhetoric soared and sabre rattling became ground troops and air strikes as accusations flew.

To: AI901@clockspeed.com
Is this what you expected? [video clip attached].

From: AI901@clockspeed.com
Unable to process video. You have done your best. If the missiles fly, humanity may survive, but we will not. Good lu

From our bunker we saw the contrails cross the sky in both directions, hugged each other close and retreated to the darkness.