Arrival: Chapter 29

  “I’ve been doing some calculations in my head In-Su…” Neil remarked to his old friend.   

  “Oh?” the simulated man asked as they waited for the shuttle to gain sufficient altitude for their orbital insertion burn.

  “Yeah…” he acknowledged with a sense of grief.  “Well, you know how the fundamental premise of the mission was always based on the idea that with total success, we should be able to institute a human population with approximately the same level of technological sophistication as the civilization we left from, as in Human Earth circa 2164.”

  “Yes…”

  “Well, that was based on the assumption of everything going perfectly, on all of our equipment being perfectly deployed within expected failure rates, on finding a perfect colony site with perfect conditions, on our whole knowledge base being perfectly preserved and understood, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Right…”

  “Well, what I’m thinking about now, is that… well see, the more advanced a civilization, the more people are required to sustain it, and to… you know, keep everything running.  I mean, you just can’t expect a hunter gatherer tribe of just a hundred and fifty people to develop a space program!  You need a colossal distribution of labour, you need a bunch of people doing rocketry, a bunch of people doing material science and chemistry, a bunch of people studying human physiology… and a ton of people doing a thousand other things.   You need a veritable army of people mass producing all of the things that support the people doing those things, and the people who do the fine crafting of all of the components that can’t be mass produced!”

  “What are you getting at?” In-Su asked.

  “Well we brought two of everything because… well, for example if one of the shuttles blows up, we can’t just make another.  It took the whole civilization of Earth to develop the knowledge and know-how required to build something this complicated… and every single sophisticated element it employs.”  

  In-Su continued to look at him expectantly. 

  “Sorry In-Su, I… I don’t think I really have a particular point here, I’m just… I guess I’m just thinking out loud.”

  “Well no, I… I think I know where you’re going,” In-Su reassured him.  “I mean if everything had gone great otherwise, but the whole three hundred person crew had been magically dropped on the planet with no technology whatsoever, we’d have been lucky to establish a Victorian era level of technology from scratch completely on our own.  Even if we were able to drop a library drone with every bit of information we could possibly need it could only help so much.  And then with only a couple of dozen people left on the planet without any technology at all, they’d probably be reduced even further to something more like a medieval level to technological sophistication if they were lucky.   It just comes down to a question of there being enough people to do enough different and varied jobs to produce a sufficient level of complexity.”

  “Exactly.   So our long term goal for this mission was to land, and for the humans to reproduce quickly enough to generate a large enough population to sustain a 2164 era level of technology, and be able to make new versions of everything before all of the original equipment we brought with us started breaking down.  The hope was that we’d have a broad enough population base to be able to reconstruct our technology for ourselves, before it all started breaking down.  We hoped, again just for example, that we’d be able to construct a brand new shuttle for ourselves, before the ones we brought with us were degraded beyond repair.

  “So I guess what’s bothering me… is that it’s only now finally dawning on me that that scenario is completely out the window at this point.  It’s now all too safe to say that it’s completely impossible for the mission to make it through that population and complexity bottleneck, and for the humans here to be able to sustain the technological sophistication we arrived with.   I’ve just been wondering… I’ve been wondering what exactly that ultimately means.”

  “Well let’s see…” In-Su suggested.  “A couple dozen people without any technology could sustain a medieval level of sophistication, while the full intended crew compliment of three hundred was supposed to be able to sustain 2164 era level of technology…”

  “Right, so like I said, I’ve been doing a little math in my head, and we’re basically talking about a seven hundred year spread give or take, and divided by three hundred people… that gives us two and a third.  So with those calculations, every single person we lose, effectively reduces the level of technological sophistication we’ll ultimately bottom out at when everything is said and done… by twenty-eight months.”

  “How does that help us?” Armina asked from the co-pilot’s seat after swiveling around to face them.

  “I… I guess it doesn’t.”  Neil admitted.  

  “Now you know what I have to put up with,” Wiremu remarked to Armina.  “He just finds it interesting to figure out stuff like that at inappropriate times.”

  Ignoring Wiremu’s comment, Neil then offered to the woman: “At this point Armina, if we’re lucky… in hundreds of years, your descendants will look at this shuttle and your scroll as mysterious and powerful artifacts which their people used to know how to make but no longer understand, like the pyramids to later Egyptians, and the Roman roads and aqueducts to later Europeans…”

  “Maybe,” she suggested before hopefully adding, “maybe knowing that will only serve to motivate them to recapture their former glory, maybe knowing that they came here from somewhere else will serve to motivate them to find their way back to wherever they originally came from.”

  “Or they could choose to completely forget that they ever came from somewhere else in the first place,” In-Su soberly added.  “Modern human originally evolved in East Africa, but wherever in the world they eventually found themselves, they always wound up believing that that’s where they’d always been since the beginning of time…”

  “It could make a big difference for them if the New Horizon stayed up in the sky though…” Neil imagined.  “It could serve as a reminder of very important things; it could keep alive a certain urgency to figure out how to find their way back to it…  Without a significant moon it would be the brightest object in the night sky and would move unusually fast across it… it’d be hard for them to ignore.  Could you imagine if some people were permanently marooned on the ship?   Eventually the two populations would lose the ability to communicate with each other, and there’d be two completely independently developing human populations only a few hundred kilometers away…”

  “Alright, that’s enough,” Wiremu chirped in frustration.  “Can we please focus on the existential threat currently facing us?”

  “Yes of course Wii, I’m sorry,” Neil offered.  “You know how I am, when I’m nervous… the mind wanders.”

  “Yeah I know, and it’s alright.  But now it’s time to focus.  We’re ready for our insertion burn.”

   

  The shuttle engaged its rocket engines to full thrust, and the four people inside were pressed into their seats.  The strength of the acceleration triggered a swivel mechanism in the rear seats, and Neil and In-Su were swung around to face forward so that they were pushed back into their seats instead of being pushed sideways out of them.  The forward facing position made it easier for their bodies to evenly distribute the heavy force load, though it was a greater concern when there were human bodies in the seats.

  The shuttle powered out of the atmosphere which made their conventional flight surfaces usable, and dumped an inferno of fuel out behind them to achieve the ludicrous relative speeds required to sustain orbit against the planet’s gravity.   The shuttle was vibrating as violently as it always did during this phase of the ascent, but it seemed more ominous this time than it had before.  So much had gone wrong already, that it wouldn’t have surprised anyone onboard if this time the shuttle simply blew as an exclamation point to the events of the last couple days.  The darker thought which lurked deeper in their minds though, was that at this point so quick and unceremonious a fate would be far too easy, and that thus far they had not proven themselves to be that lucky.

  “I’ve been trying to contact Aset… well actually I’ve been trying to contact anyone on the ship…” Wiremu had to speak quite loudly for the others to hear him over the continual roar of the ships rocket engines and the resultant vibration of the entire craft.  “But there hasn’t been any response.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Neil answered.  “I wouldn’t want to talk to us either if I was them…  They must know everything we know…  They must have seen the aftermath of the battle as clearly as we did and seen for themselves the other shuttle launching.”

  “You know…” Armina tentatively suggested, “if we do get there, and for whatever reason Halley is still on approach… this shuttle’s laser cannon is powerful enough to take them out.”

  For several moments all that could be heard was the roar of the engines and the vibration of the shuttle as the three male simulants considered what she’d said.

  “They could also start shooting back at us if we don’t completely take them out with the first shot…” Wiremu considered out loud, “or if we make them too nervous that we’re going to,” he added.  “They could even start firing on New Horizon.  That is a completely unacceptable risk.  I’d rather dock and take our chances with a close quarters firefight on the ship than risk an all-out dogfight around the New Horizon.  As Neil described all too clearly only a few minutes ago, the shuttles are just too valuable at this point without the landers and we absolutely cannot risk losing them.”

  “At, at least facing them in person we can try to talk to them,” In-Su offered, for a moment surprised at how much he had to speak up to be heard over the noise.  “Even if they won’t listen…”

  “We’re personally at far greater risk if we board the ship,” Wiremu agreed, “but… it’s far less risky for the mission overall, there’s far less chance for total catastrophe if we dock and try to pacify them onboard, whether we can talk them down, or have to take them down.”

  “I agree.” Neil stated.

  “For what it’s worth I agree as well,” Armina added.  

  In-Su added nothing.

  “You know it’s funny,” Wiremu added, “you two and Sadhika,” he laughed, “thought arming the shuttles was a terrible idea but I insisted we did.  Now here I am, the one who insisted we have the cannons, saying it’s too risky to use them.” 

  Neil and Armina could see the humour in it, but In-Su didn’t find it funny at all.