After the Big Nothing people were openly fearful and they were quieter than usual, afraid to speak up. They weren’t helping each other to get over it, and, worse, they were drawing each other into it. Sammie’s mom had a saying which she never understood until now: “misery loves company.”
The scariest part is that nobody knew what had caused it and could not make sense of it. Was it sabotage? a system failure? Some kind of attack? Nothing fit, nothing made sense. But the fear was palpable, more so than Sammie expected.
The first thing Sammie did was to check on Kiki. It seemed that there was no Big Nothing in their habitat. They talked, cried, and laughed for a while. They both knew that everything was being spied on, so Sammie was careful not to hint at her real suspicions.
Pulp Fiction
In fact, the whole being-spied-on thing made her research more complex. But then, she had paper, the stuff made up from the pulp of dead trees.
She had gotten physical sheets of paper a while back when somebody waxed poetic about the feel of paper, and, oh gosh, that smell. It sounded very alluring then and she had gotten it, but when she actually tried it out she didn’t find it very sensual and it didn’t smell of anything, at least not anything pleasant. On the other hand, it was hard to handle because light had to hit it just so or else there was always a shadow or a reflection getting in the way. Nevertheless, she kept it and had brought it along out of habit. And good she did because paper was “off the grid” as they said in the drama Mods.
Of course the Worms could track paper if it was visible to the nearest camera or laser. But her outside jacket defeated that. The Worms would see her moving around the anchorMod, but they could not see what was under her outside jacket. She made her writing look like nervous scratching, a tick, and that’s what you would see: Sammie mindlessly scratching every so often.
Jotting things down on paper helped her remember later on, the same as moving around in the Mods did. Her muscles would help her remember, the act of writing would help her remember, focusing on something to jot down would help her remember. She was glad that she had kept that particular memento around.
Vic’s Mirror
Ever since he could remember, Vic had had a knack for picking up on things that would later come in handy. And the Magnetar Effect was one of those things. They were still back in the oYard when he first heard about them from Mr Bellamy. Early in the century they were just a theory, something that dropped out of the math. Then somebody tracked the mysterious fast radio bursts to their source and they ended up discovering the first magnetars. Astronomers had used them to study high-energy astrophysics and map the rarefied, magnetized plasma that space is full of. But that’s not what interested Vic.
After Munjez, his child, was born, Vic desperately wanted to make a mark in the world for Munjez to admire. He had never worked so hard tracking all kinds of math puzzles the space people loved so much, but nothing paid off. Besides, math exercises were not his passion, his forte was using the math to make things that did something that solved problems. And surprisingly, magnetars fit.
The kind of magnetar he became interested in was the repeating kind. They were buried in dwarf galaxies and repeated fast radio bursts that originated elsewhere. Enough of them had been discovered by now that anybody who wanted could set up equipment to witness the whole song and dance. One of those bursts close enough to a habitat would bring down the whole electromagnetic infrastructure of a habitat. That’d be really something, if it would only last a fraction of a second. But using it this way would not make him famous and admired as he wanted to be. Nevertheless, it was fun working out how to create an array of mirrors that could direct the energy. He worked on it on and off and eventually he found that he could arrange such a local repeater by positioning a few of the many satellites that the habitats had at their disposal. He never did test it because how would you test such a thing without anybody noticing? But he knew it would work.
Samantha Bellamy, PI
Sammie was very, very curious about the Big Nothing—you could even say she was obsessed with it. She was convinced that it was a trick that Vick had pulled off, but she could not figure out how he had done it. She had to learn how to do it herself if she was to prove that it was a trick and not at all mysterious.
It didn’t go as quickly as it could have because she had to look at other things. She had to or the pattern of her obsession would become too obvious to anybody who might be spying on her Mod time.
As she was about to move further down the trail of her great-great-grandmother she had a feeling that she needed to revisit her father Mod. Something she had seen or that he had said kept bouncing around her head, but she wasn’t sure what it was or when he said it. As she was moving out, frustrated, she heard her father talk about how some galaxies could generate flashes of radio waves as bright as 500 million Suns for a few milliseconds. Not obvious that this was it but Vic did hang around her dad a lot. Even an attenuated version of that energy would be enough to knock out a habitat’s electromagnetic infrastructure.
Over many days and much “scratching” under her jacket, she figured out how to do it. She eventually figured out how to arrange their satellites into the right configuration to unleash Big Nothings. Or, rather, a stream of similar events. Vic had access to the habitat’s system when the power went out and he was probably able to prevent the emergency system from coming online. She would not have that luxury, so her best hope was to cause a stream of events, one after the other. The emergency systems would immediately come online, but the disruption stream would be enough for people to notice.
The next challenge was to rearrange the satellites. Vic had the advantage, again, of having access to them, and she didn’t. At least, not directly. But the bot satellites were part of the Galanet and changed position and attitude depending on their data loads among other things. She would have to configure a bunch of requests that would eventually consume an avalanche of data and would get the satellites in the right position. If Vic had done it and if he was watching, he’d figure out what was happening before she had a chance to trigger a stream of Big Nothings. But she still hoped that it wasn’t him watching. All she needed was 60 seconds.
She. Is. Right!
Sammie finally had it all set up to trigger a series of Big Nothing events that the backup systems would not be able to paper over. She was ready to start a commotion.
She had figured out how to turn off the sound canceling around her quarters and before she fired the first event stream, she played music really loud and broke into Mods she wasn’t supposed to and basically graffitied them.
As people started gathering outside her door, angrier than they should have been, the first stream of Big Nothings happened. And the hum from the gathering stopped as it did at every Major habitat. Although brief, the events were noticeable enough to get everybody’s attention and to set off a wave of fear.
Her room’s door unlocked and before anybody could react, she ran out and started to tell them that there was another event coming… and then she was slapped! A woman (Dotty, from the ICU?) had slapped her and the shock stopped Sammie from talking. But it didn’t stop the pre-programmed Big Nothing stream from happening. This time a few of the hallway lights didn’t come back and segments of the hallway were still in the dark. Many of the people around her looked shocked and disgusted. They were not used to seeing this kind of casual violence in action.
Dottie started shaking Sammie until others intervened and made her stop. You don’t speak unless you are allowed to speak, she yelled as they were pulling her off and caused a palpable shock. She backtracked a little, you’re endangering these people … and even for your safety, we can’t let you panic us. She should have stopped there, but she could not help herself, and that’s the problem with letting anyone say what they want and when they feel like it. We need order and we want you to shut up. Sammie saw that the faces she could see were not nodding in solidarity and, in fact, some were shaking in disapproval.
Vic emerged quietly from one of the darkened hallways. In spite of the narrowness of the halfway, people parted and got out of his way as he walked. He had his goofy smile on, somewhere between pissed and amused. He stopped in front of Sammie and then turned his back to her and said, Sammie is right. And then he said it again, but this time louder and in a regal tone, She. Is. Right!
I created the Big Nothing. I had moved the emergency systems offline as part of the experiment and I simply was having a hard time bringing them online, so the event went on longer than I wished. I should have said that earlier, but the effect the Big Nothing had on all of us surprised me.
The event brought out the true essence in each of us. It let out our real selves over the concerns of our socialized selves, that part of us that has been taught to react to fear by begging others to help us take it out of us. As if you were a helpless victim and the only people who could help you were the other helpless victims. To me the Big Nothing was the Big Something for what it gave birth to. And not just in this habitat but all over the Major habitats. Even people who didn’t experience it directly were affected by it.
I’d been experimenting with magnetars quietly because I thought it could be used as a weapon against us. A murmur ran up and down the hallway when Vic said weapon. I suspect that what we are giving birth to here will be seen as a threat to those outside the Major habitats, particularly those down there. He said that while pointing at Earth. I hope that won’t be the case, but we have to be ready to defend ourselves. All my work has been online all the time, easily accessible. As he finished he turned to me and continued, And as we can see, Samantha Bellamy, First of Earth, wanted to turn it into a weapon to confuse us and derail us and scare us back into docility. But it didn’t work, did it. His eyes were burning with fury while the rest of his face was wearing a smile.
Vic had twisted what she had done to his favor. Just like that, he accused the rest of humanity of doing the very things that he was doing to the habitat community. He built a weapon. He declared everyone in the Major a special people, separate from the rest of humanity. He had managed to scare all these people into being obedient to him and the fiat hierarchy that was forming around him. This had to stop now.
A Loud Whisper
It could be in your head, Kiki had said. They knew not to say anything too obvious, but they could still let each other know when something was significant, and Kiki made abundantly clear that this meant something, something specific. She also made that you’d better gesture when she mentioned your recent shots.
Sammie was telling her about the Big Nothing and the “whisper” she thought she heard when Kiki mentioned these things. Still, Sammie had no idea of what Kiki was trying to tell her.
After Kiki left the Mod, Sammie spent more time looking around her great-great-grandmother Mod. She found a couple of interesting things, but nothing to write home about. She was tired of Surface gravity and turned to leave the Mod and then it hit her. Her “recent shots” had to be in reference to the neuromorphics upgrade shots. She had that done a while back, but they were, technically, the most “recent” and they were in Sammie’s head. So Kiki thought that the “whispers” were caused by the neuromorphics. But she had the upgrade shots quite a while back, so why show that behavior now? Or… maybe the “whispers” were always there and she had not sensed them before because of all the electronic noise that she normally was immersed in. That is, until the Big Nothing and the electronic silence that it brought with it.
But why did Sammie “hear” anything at all? It made sense that the neuromorphics kept going because they are not powered by an external source. They get their juice the same way that neurons do. Could Others’; neuromorphics be causing the noise that she sensed as a whisper? But if they were broadcasting outside the skull, then were they inducing waves on one another? That… couldn’t… that would be the equivalent of telepathy. And not telepathy of cognitive thought, but of feelings. Whoa!
The next question for Sammie was how to test Kiki’s hypothesis. And next after that, how could she use it to thwart Vic and his mob. Not clear that it would be useful for that, but she had to find out.
Before Sammie could figure out how to test it, Kiki did and she let Sammie know that the whispers were related to the neuromorphics. Kiki didn’t have to say it, but Sammie knew that Kiki was now on the trail and would keep digging. So, she could focus if this could be used to at least slow Vic down.
