“Do you think it worked?”
Jabool looked at the Minister of the Interior, his face perfectly reflected the internal pain the man was obviously going through. His breathing flaps had somehow drooped low enough to make it seem like they had merged with his feeding ones. It did nothing to alleviate his already hangdog expression.
The Minister hadn’t been an original supporter of Jabool’s plan to create sentient probes to combat the metal rain, but he had seen how effective it was in dealing with the problem in their own system.
The question was; would the plan of sending out the sentience code to probes that were launched by his grandfather’s grandfather’s generation work?
Even with the initial mission parameters, finding these probes with a needle-shot of a highly complex transmission was a shot in the dark to say the least.
The Minister’s vestibule arm-limbs seemed to Jabool to hang even more limp than usual, Jabool turned away from him and walked to the wide shell shaped window that took up most of the Minister’s office. He walked over to it and stood on his hindmost legs and looked up into the Raiffe sky.
Both moons were visible in the slowly darkening eastern sky, the equinox would be soon, and the nights would slowly get longer as they slipped into their dark and lengthy winter. He did not turn as he spoke to the Minister, instead he strained his eyes as he looked up, as if he expected to see some sort of sign that what he saw as the only hope for the galaxy had worked.
“I don’t know Brazeel, many of those probes were sent out so long ago that not many of them will be closer than fifty to seventy five light years from us. Perhaps the first signals will have reached the probes by now.
The truth is we only need one hit in each five hundred light-year cubed volume of space, we’ve seen how effective they can be . . .”
Jabool trailed off, he felt that their best chance lay in a probe that was launched circa five hundred years ago heading for a bunch of stars at about a fifty light-year distance from Raiffe. If the probe hadn’t already diverted, then the signal would reach it when it was little more than a light-year's distance from its target.
Then of course the code had to be accepted into the probe’s mainframe, here on Raiffe they could test away to their heart’s content. However these machines were ancient technology, and who knows what would happen if the signals even reached their targets; could you give a sentience upgrade to a five hundred year old machine over fifty light-years away?
If so, it would definitely be the feat of a generation and Jabool would win Raiffe’s highest scientific prize the Lanzeel-Harpzoid. Ironically named after the two scientists who started the probe program over five centuries ago.
Jabool had always admired the people who had started the probe program, being involved in work that they knew they would not be alive to see the end of.
He felt sorry for them too though, if they had lived in this time then there’s every chance they could live to see it through. Life extension had gotten so good that Jabool could expect to live a few centuries as an organic, and thereafter fairly indefinitely as a digital mind.
He had started projects that would have implications thousands of years from now, and he’d probably be around to see most of those implications.
“That is of course”
He thought to himself,
“if the metal rain doesn’t come and wash us all away.”
The sun had almost set now, the green tinge of fading daylight, giving way to the dark blues of early evening.
Pytia and Somera, Raiffe’s closest moons shone at opposite ends of the expanding sky, Jabool hoped they would continue to appear together at equinox for many more moons to come.
The Minister behind him shuffled uncomfortably as he realised the young scientist was not going to say anything more about the matter that might sound good in a report to his superiors.
He left Jabool to silently stare out of his window, leaving the Minister feeling like a spare part in his own office.
Metal Rain: Chapter 8 - First Born
Metal Rain: Chapter 7 - First Contact
Metal Rain: Chapter 6 - The Impossibility Of Being
Metal Rain: Chapter 5 - Entropy Envy
Metal Rain: Chapter 4 - Vacuum Call
Metal Rain: Chapter 3 - Transformation Requiem
Metal Rain: Chapter 2 - Nanostorm
Cryptogee Chronicles Book Two: Metal Rain - Chapter 1 - Void Edge
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