The Return of 249516 Aretha
A science fiction tribute
“Missy, we have a problem.”
“What is it, Ship?” Missy Franklin Gok Lin always smiled at the flat emotionless voice of her Ship AI. She thought Ship was either trying too hard or not enough to sound human.
Missy had tried to give Ship various emotion simulators, but the results had all been bizarre. Ship’s AI just couldn’t get the right combination of tone and timing to slide into the grey zone of ambiguity that humans occupied with ease. What was instinct for Missy was an impossible challenge for Ship.
Missy preferred to give Ship a monotone than try and parse Ship’s attempts at emotional intimacy.
“We are on our approach into 249516 Aretha,” Ship said.
Missy smiled wider at Ship’s tendency to state the obvious. The life of a miner, she sighed. Her constant companion was bland and not too smart but still her Ship.
“As I calculate our orbital speed after we set the tether in, we will either be unable to maintain contact or we will hit the asteroid at an unacceptable rate of speed,” Ship added.
“How unacceptable?” Missy asked.
“Likely we both won’t survive.”
Missy stopped smiling, sat up, her eyes wide.
“Not survive … we’ll die?” she asked, looking around the simple cabin of the asteroid miner. “What are the alternatives? How did this happen? Why don’t we slow down?”
“I will answer last first. We have insufficient fuel for an assisted brake, expending what we have will cause us to spin out adrift. The slingshot around the Sun Earth LaGrange Point Four used almost all of our fuel in order to achieve the required eleven point zero two delta-v to arrive first at 249516 Aretha. As calculated at the burn, the odds of a successful tether were over seventy-five percent, except that further data shows that 249516 Aretha has a highly erratic spin. An incorrect diameter based on an erroneous albedo measurement in Astarank hid this anomaly. The odds of a successful tether are now less than three point one three four percent. The alternative is to fly by 249…”
“Aretha,” Missy interrupted. “You don’t need to keep saying the full name.”
“Fly by Aretha,” Ship continued, “and continue on to 43786 Oumea as an alternative destination. It will take seventy years.”
“Except I won’t live for seventy years more.” Missy snapped back. AIs for all their processing power could be so dumb.
Missy shook her head in frustration, She had gambled and lost. As much as she wanted to blame the Ship, it had made her aware of the risks. You have to take risk to strike it big, she thought, like the thousands of asteroid miners who bounced from asteroid to asteroid like a frogs jumping between stones. They all were looking for the big score, a rare mineral, or the pay dirt, radioactive elements, that were so rare in space.
Missy had gambled big after spending years with Ship bidding along with the rest of the single ship miners on reclamations and used rocks and getting paid just enough delivering the powdered rock needed for radiation shielding to stay in space. The good rocks, rich carbonaceous chrondrites, went to the cartels who had the technology to win first mining rights and enforce them by getting to untouched asteroids first.
She had thought it fate when the asteroid Aretha came up and there was only light bidding. She researched the rock quickly and realized that it wasn’t only a rich carbonaceous chrondrite, it was also named for one of her ancestors, Aretha Franklin.
The bidding was light because of its location on the edge of the third Hamilton resonance gap in the asteroid belt, making the asteroid both far away and isolated in the empty space created by resonance with Jupiter’s orbit.
Assuming she caught the cartels sleeping, Missy bought Aretha’s first mining rights cheap, even though it took all of her credit. She knew, though, that first mining rights were only as good as her ability to enforce them by getting to the asteroid. The cartels kept their power by using their vast stores of reaction mass to jump first rights by arriving first at claimed asteroids. They could then buy the mining rights cheap from the original placer whose legal remedies were limited by distance. Possession still overwhelmed the law.
She and Ship had a solution to get her near Earth miner out past Mars. They had expended almost all their reaction mass in tight spin around a Lagrange point to slingshot out into the asteroid belt. Missy thanked her ancestor, thinking she was finally going to be rich. They’ll respect me now, she’d thought at the time.
Now she knew she had been too optimistic. She and Ship were headed to a crash landing with low odds of survival.
“Set the tether, Ship.” Missy commanded.
“Acknowledged and initiated,” Ship replied.
“Ship, access my family data stores and search Aretha Franklin. Do you see a music archive?” Missy asked
“Yes, quite extensive.” Ship said.
“Play me the most popular song from the store. Play it loud and keeping playing it. Maybe Aretha will protect us from her namesake.”
“Acknowledged and initiated,” Ship replied.
The small mining ship flew past the asteroid before slowing to a stop and then speeding up in a tightening orbit around the asteroid Aretha. It appeared to tremble with the bass beat blasting within until it hit the asteroid in a puff of space dust.
Two long silver ships orbit on opposite sides of the asteroid that had been named 249516 Aretha back in the first diaspora from Earth. It had remained untouched in its empty gap in the asteroid belt all through the second diaspora but now, in the third attempt by Earthlings to conquer space, it had been found.
“We have confirmed the existence of a first diaspora artifact: it looks like an ancient miner,” the comtech said, simultaneously transmitting the data pack via mindlink, and taking great pains to look over the top of the head of his superior and not at his face.
The data was downloaded up the chain of command, each step the communicator carefully looking over the head of his or her superior avoiding eye contact until finally the news reached their leader, the Most Downcast, her eyes looking straight down.
“We must keep this artifact out of the hands of those arrogant bastards, with their noses in the air,” the Most Downcast said, referring to the Highest, the enemy of the Downcast.
“We have a hardtech on site?” she asked without lifting her eyes.
“Yes, but so do the Stuck Up,” the crew member said, using the slang name of the Highest.
Images flooded down the chain of linked minds until the Most Downcast saw in her mind’s eye her hardware tech looking straight across into the eyes of the enemy, the Highest’s hardware tech. She shuddered at the eye contact, thankful she could look down. The Most Downcast studied the ancient ship through her hardtech’s eyes until she had to break off, unable to bear any more eye contact.
Across from his Downcast peer, the Highest hardware tech uploaded the data to his chain of command, appending a brief commentary.
“There still appears to be power,” he said
Each step in the Highest hierarchy upward, a communication tech transferred via mindlink the data file. Each comtech took great pains to keep his gaze below that of his superior until finally the data reached the Most High in the long silver ship, orbiting opposite an identical ship occupied by the Downcast.
The Most High shuddered at the sight in his mind’s eye of the Downcast hardtech.
Looking straight up while taking great pains not to look down, the Most High said to his second in command, “I can practically taste the dirt, seeing that Worm,” he said using the slang term for the Downcast.
His first mate, making sure he looked below the Most High’s upward gaze, agreed, “How can they think there is any nobility in living in tunnels. We are meant for the heavens and stations and ships, not warrens and tunnels and rocks. They are presumptuous to think this rare artifact is worthy of moon dwellers.”
The Most High nodded his pleasure at the comments while keeping his eyes focused on the heavens. His smile faded quickly when he saw in his mind’s eye the Downcast hardtech move toward the mining ship.
The Most Downcast in her ship was having a similar conversation. She expressed shock that anyone could live like the Stuck Up floating in space in ships and stations. The Most Downcast abruptly stopped, even looking up ever so slightly when she saw in her mind’s eye the Highest hardtech move toward the mining ship.
“Open it!” The Most Downcast commanded, the order cascading mind to mind to the Downcast hardtech.
“Open it!” The Most High Commanded at the same time, the order cascading through the Highest.
Both hardtechs reached for the hatch on the ancient ship and together they pulled it open.
To understand what happened next it is necessary to understand the phenomenon of the trigger wave. Normally, information moves from node to node, slowing with each hand-off as well as twisting in meaning. Rarely though, when nodes are coupled together, like the interconnected minds of the Downcast and Highest, and those nodes create a positive feedback loop, then a trigger wave is created. Fire through a field, memes across a network, even cell death follow a trigger wave where a signal propagates almost instantaneously over large distances without losing strength or speed.
It also necessary to know that music, which stimulates the limbic system to communicate emotion, was lost to humanity along with all the other cultural practices known as “the Humanities” in the AI dominated second diaspora. Conquering space under the totalitarian control of machine minds, humans then reasserted their dominance with the invention of the mindlink. By sharing their biological processing power, people were able to overthrow the oppressive domination of artificial intelligence. The third diaspora rose out of the subsequent collapse, but much that had defined humanity had already been lost.
While mindlinked humans dominated the third diaspora, they lived under rigid hierarchy and harsh conditions underground or in orbit. The third diaspora would have seemed a grim time to the ancient humans of first diaspora.
On asteroid Aretha, the two hardtechs opened up the mining ship. The ship, still with power, came out of its dormancy with a blast of music. The music flew through the linked minds of the Highest and Downcast, creating a powerful trigger wave of emotion that cascaded through the whole of humanity. Rushing through their minds were the letters R-E-S-P-E-C-T in the booming voice of the Queen of Soul.
Months later after the revolution, two hardtechs of the Equal looked each other in the eye, then down at the ancient mining ship that had caused it all. Before the eyes and linked minds of the joined ranks of humanity, the Equal they called themselves, the hardtechs carefully examined the remaining data files from the precious Aretha mining ship.
Together, the hardtechs hummed a gently rising tune, practicing humanity’s rediscovered passion, music.
“It looks like there is just one other intact Aretha Franklin music file,” the first hardtech said.
“Well let’s play it. We have the attention of the solar system,” the second hardtech said.
“By the way, what is it called?” She asked.
“I think it’s called Amazing Grace,” the second hardtech said, before broadcasting the file that would change everything.
