Sep 7th, 2081
Richard's life was split in two: the time before his BioNano treatment and the time after. In his early years, he did just enough to avoid disappointing his dad too much. He wasn't a standout at school, where most teachers figured he was slacking off. But once he was staring down the barrel of a potentially limitless future, he started to dread the specter of eternal tedium. What would he do once he'd seen and done it all? So he set his sights on mastering every bit of knowledge out there. He knew he could take his time—after all, time was something he had plenty of now. Plus, he was right at the heart of cutting-edge work, surrounded by some of the sharpest minds around.
Spellbound by math and science, he zeroed in on the points where he deemed they had faltered. It crossed his mind that Landsbury's formulas had performed the same miracle upon any formula sporting a "G" as the role non-Euclidean geometry had played in reshaping Euclidean geometry. The old mathematics remained valid, but only within a much more confined frame of reference. Richard cleverly maneuvered around these boundaries, bearing in mind phenomena such as dark matter and dark energy, born solely to justify why observed happenings didn't correspond with the projected outcomes. He shrugged off these pacifiers, aware that the arcane maths behind them were now comprehensible. This revelation was pure elation for Richard, he found himself engrossed in unraveling its mysteries in his newfound limitless availability.
Brenda, as she set out to forge an energy source for her legion of nanobots, was leaps ahead in the race, already backed by an abundant knowledge of quantum mechanics.
As Brenda engaged the machine in conversation, a symphony of 49 screens flickered into existence in Richard's purview. He danced around a ballet of information, effortlessly pushing and pulling the screens, morphing the data they projected. Each embodied one of the 49 axioms of Landsbury's Law of Gravity.
"It's as though he tossed as many universal constants as humanly possible into a proverbial blender. Take #13, for example - it's a cocktail of the fine structure constant, the Planck constant, the gravitational constant, the golden ratio, the speed of light, pi, and e. These elements don't typically coexist in the same mathematical equations, but here they are, in repeat performances. It's giving me a headache," Richard grumbled to Brenda.
Absorbed in her own tasks, Brenda responded in an automated tone, giving away her distraction. Somewhat nettled by this, Richard chose to overlook it and not raise a fuss.
"The hodgepodge of constants can be justified if viewed through the lens of the universal laws of all forces. L-13, for instance, drills down into the key factors governing the quantity of energy needed to generate a certain magnitude of attraction over a certain radius of its area of influence. With a solid handle on 'g' and 'r', it’s feasible to calculate the energy – in joules – required for a 0.1-second-long impulse to trigger the effect," Brenda expounded.
"The initial 15 laws are what I would term rudimentary, and the others, from L-16 through to L-49, determine the interaction of all forces in the universe, no matter the scale – from the minuscule to the grandiose universal expanse. For now, focus on getting to grips with those first 15," she encouraged.
"The Landsbury prime constants, denoted L′=(φ^1/π)/(0.5π⋅c) ≈ 2.29×10^−9 s/m and L"=((π^9/L′) × h^e)/ℏ⋅(c²/e^(αeπ)) ≈ L"≈6.238551881158565x10^−27 J, serves as a guide for L-13, where both the radius and the attraction are calibrated to one. But Brenda, these calculations, they yield an absurdly smaller result than expected from these assumed values," Richard posited.
"Do another check on your units," Brenda advised, providing no additional guidance. Richard appreciated her implicit trust in his abilities, yet was somewhat aggravated by her apparent lack of full attention. Taking a moment to reassess his calculations, he sheepishly admitted - she had been correct.
"Why is there no scalar axiom for work?" Richard's tone bordered on accusation, as if he believed Marcus Landsbury had deliberately omitted something critical, perhaps out of spite.
Brenda sighed, her exhalation a mix of frustration and resignation, and turned toward him. Her eyes, usually a sharp hazel, seemed to soften in the dim light of the cluttered lab. "At the Eververse level, what does gravity do?" she asked, her voice tinged with a challenge.
"Do?... It doesn't do anything. It doesn't even exist, just the potential foundations for gravity to exist. Right?" Richard's reply came with hesitant certainty, as if he was piecing together a puzzle without all the pieces.
"Close enough for our purposes." Brenda's response was dismissive yet encouraging. "Now, what is work as far as physics is concerned?"
"Something that consumes all your time?" Richard cracked a smile, attempting to lighten the mood with humor.
"If you are going to waste my time," Brenda huffed, her patience thinning. She turned back to her tablet, her fingers swiping through data with practiced ease, the glow of the screen casting shadows across her focused face.
"No, I see it now. It merely exists, so it is non-scalar." Richard's realization dawned slowly, like sunlight creeping over the horizon.
"Until?" Brenda prompted, her interest piqued yet not fully engaged, not looking up and using minimal attention.
"The field is collapsed? Wait... go back to your work for a minute." Richard's mind raced ahead, connecting dots that were previously unseen.
The lab was filled with a near-sacred silence, punctuated only by Richard's occasional muttered curses and the soft tapping of Brenda's fingers on her tablet. It was a dance of minds, each lost in thought yet together in their quest.
"L-9 establishes the structure, L-13 collapses the field which adds units of energy and mass. And L-30 breaks out the four forces as vectors," Richard announced, his voice a mixture of pride and relief. He looked over at Brenda, his eyes seeking approval, much like a loyal dog awaiting a sign of affection from its master.
"Not exactly the way I would have phrased it, especially regarding L-13's role in collapsing the field, but I'm proud of you just the same," Brenda finally said, her voice softening. She offered him a brief, approving nod before turning her attention back to her work, her mind already racing ahead to the next problem to solve. Still, she added to focus him, "Don't think fields, they are way too big for the eVersic scale. Think observation and collapsing probabilities. Also, gravity is an emergent property, not a force."
"Semantics," Richard said in frustrated rebellion.
"Clear definitions become vital the deeper you go."
"This still feels like we're conjuring something out of thin air. We've even engineered a perpetual motion machine using this breakthrough, and yet you maintain that the elemental principles still apply. Does that not seem like a contradiction?" a skeptical Richard questioned.
"Try to picture the bafflement of those who first had to clear up the fallout from nuclear power operations. To them, ignorant of the concept of energy-mass conversion, it must have seemed like we were plucking energy from the ether. What we're doing here parallels that, but it dives far deeper. We're tapping into the energy harnessed in gravity, translating to fiddling with the very weave of space-time. That’s an oversimplification but should give a rough understanding for now," Brenda elucidated.
"So are we depleting the resource here? Could this have dire consequences down the line," mused Richard. He had a propensity to ponder on the potential ramifications of actions, a mentality that often left Brenda bamboozled, especially since it contrasted starkly with her trigger-happy disposition.
"Even though the concept of the Eververse is still murky to me, it appears that it either has a self-regenerative ability or it's on such a massive scale that it would take billions of years to exhaust," Brenda conjectured.
"Is your belief system rooted in established scientific principles, or is it merely a reflection of your rose-colored glasses?" Richard inquired, his skepticism still palpable.
"I can't help but long for a discussion with Dr Landsbury. How can such a prodigious intellect choose to distance himself to such an extreme extent? He can't just revolutionize the world and then vanish off the face of the earth. A humble handful of people, a mere five globally, can grasp the majority of these formulas. And, it irks me that I'm not among them."
"Attempting to use emotional leverage to dodge my question, are you?" Richard had stopped pushing the displays around. A sign that he was paying full attention to her now.
"I regard it as an educated hypothesis," Brenda responded confidently. "Yes, we are tampering with gravity, the repercussions of which are pretty much an enigma. But, like I said earlier, the Eververse might be self-sustaining or so enormous that draining it would necessitate billions of years. While we need to tirelessly research and experiment to better grasp the consequences of our undertakings, we also have to keep our sails unfurled and push ahead on our journey of discovery. It's all about striking a balance."
Abruptly, two of the screens flashed: "Elon calling" in bright text, accompanied by a slight buzzing sound. "Answer," she commanded, and Elon's face was projected in vibrant 3D installations.
"Did you see my pyramid ship disassemble itself?" He asked, his face split into an ear-to-ear grin, hardly a reaction one would expect to a catastrophe.
"Sorry I didn't get an alert. We've been busy in the lab."
"Brenda, darling. How is Richard doing?"
"I'm still in one piece, Elon. Although, I can't quite figure out why there's no camera down here on the floor," joked Richard.
"You've just reduced the largest spaceship known to humanity to scraps. Yet there you are, all smiles?"
"Because thanks to your timely counsel, it was just a 1 km pyramid ship that met its fate, and not the 20 km behemoth that I initially intended to send to its doom. Having witnessed the outcome, I now see the wisdom behind your caution. An engineer on my team proposed an intriguing thought experiment – that an inverted pyramid, if somehow stopped from toppling over and then weighed down, would crumble under its own weight at its apex. Ever wondered what that looks like if the ship's orientation matches this set-up? I have a riveting video to show you. But what really tickles my fancy is knowing that you'll come up with a strategy to remedy this," Elon gushed, his sparkling enthusiasm infectious.
"I've been delving into the problem, and it's evident that the energy demands grow considerably beyond one gravity. Fortunately, this isn't a roadblock since we're only in need of one gravity," Brenda stated, rubbing her palms on her cobalt-blue dress, a gesture that Richard noted wondering if her hands were damp from nervousness or attraction.
"That still seems slow," remarked Elon, turning to Richard for confirmation.
"You're thinking like a traditional rocket scientist. With constant acceleration, your momentum accumulates rapidly – think of it like compound interest," Richard said, his voice emanating from somewhere outside the frame.
"The radius of effect is another crucial factor to bear in mind. The energy needed to stretch the radius spirals exponentially. A four-meter radius at one gravity is a victory for, say, a truck that powers itself," Brenda explained.
"You know who you're bantering with, right? We've already given those a test run ourselves at Grav-X," Elon sharply interjected.
"Are you implying there were no shipping containers longer than four meters?" Brenda asked, feigning innocence.
"Far from it. A standard shipping box is 6 meters in length, and we have trucks built to transport two of those. However, I see where you're going with this. We got it to work by utilizing three lifters per truck bed, shoving the containers' weight down to a few hundred pounds, each with a radius of effect of 2 meters. A solitary front-facing lifter does the pulling. We devised a way to pump enough energy from the primary lifter to boot up the others. We made do with this rough-and-ready solution, but I should say, it worked quite well," Elon elaborated.
"Calling it make-do is underselling your accomplishment, but if that's the case, you're not going to be thrilled by the workaround we'll need to implement to get your ship off the ground. Even after bending over backward, I don't think we'd be able to surpass a kilometer," Brenda prophetically answered.
Brenda started scribbling calculations in the air, and the numbers materialized just as fast as she jotted. Then she whistled, "220 floors. Not bad." she hastily scribbled something additional, "The base would necessitate an estimated 20,000 4m radius 1g stabilizers. Oh boy! That's a whopping 750,000 stabilizers per ship."
Elon's grin broadened, "It's intriguing how you've taken inspiration from our concept of self-pulling trucks. It may indeed turn out advantageous since we'd have all these tug components at our disposal for asteroid duty."
"Once the terraformation of our new home has been achieved, we could recycle every ship, right down to its bare bones. Right off the bat, we could gain 20,000 tug components from the base alone. Can you create such a substantial volume of large tug components?" Brenda sounded skeptical.
Elon's smile seemed a tad bit strained as he concluded his conversation, "Your task is to furnish the blueprint, and let me handle the construction. Don't worry too much about it," he replied, masking some unease.
Brenda noticed the forced smile but didn't bring attention to it. "We'll work on the blueprint and send it over to you once we're done. Looking forward to collaborating with you," Brenda responded.
"Likewise. Keep me updated on the progress," said Elon, before ending the call. Brenda couldn't shake off the feeling that Elon was hiding something, but she decided to focus on the task at hand and concern herself with that later.
"Richard, I think we need to go to Denmark."
"Is this an ego-saving invite, Brenda?"
"It's not about ego, Richard. I need you there as my shield. Magnus's marriage hasn't tamed his... tendencies, and I need to focus on our work, not fend off his advances."
"You know, with him looking perpetually 23 and you being in your seventies—delightful to me regardless—do you really think he’ll...?"
"Age doesn't change the game for someone like Magnus. I've rejected him before, which only fuels his desire. And it's not just lust; he wants to conquer my mind, which he views as a territory akin to his own."
"Imagine the humble self-absorbed geniuses you’d breed," Richard teased, a smirk in his voice.
"Fuck you," Brenda snapped, her tone colder than Richard had anticipated.
Her rare use of profanity signaled to Richard that he had crossed a line. He hastened to change the subject.
"So, what exactly do we need from Magnus that requires a personal visit?"
"I require access to his quantum computer."
"You could have started with that! My schedule is open, just let me know when."
"Well, I still have to get permission from Magnus."
"I doubt that is going to be a problem," Richard grumbled.