2277-04-20: Space Walk

Apr 20th, 2277

Richard had a council meeting scheduled for 8:00 AM where some of the parameters regarding Janice's restrictions on transmuters were to be deliberated. The council was aiming to define what constituted organic material within this scope - a problem that proved to be more challenging than anticipated. Once the meeting concluded, he was to join Orla at 10:00 AM to observe her work outside on the asteroid hull. The schedule was tight, but Richard had complete faith in Janice ensuring everything went seamlessly.

Realizing that his Halo wasn't on its hook, Richard asked softly, "Janice, where’s my Halo?" It still felt strange not needing to quiet his voice when Orla was asleep; old habits die hard.

In her characteristically clever tone, Janice replied, "Have you checked your head, handsome?" Richard felt a sense of mortification ripple through him, the Halo's familiar minute weight now evident on his head. He adjusted it slightly before heading to his council meeting. En route, Richard enjoyed a 'sia' – a fluffy, bagel-like confection laced with a substance akin to cream cheese and nutrient-rich supplements, embodying the quintessential nutritious food crafted by Janice. Alongside floated a softball-sized sphere of coffee; devoid of a container, it floated in mid-air, and Richard simply stuck a straw into it to sip. If left unfinished, he merely pushed it towards the floor for absorption.

Try as they might, the council made no progress during the meeting. Janice, competently managing his documents, signified that it was time for him to depart. With a courteous floating exit via a newly-forming hole in the meeting hall, Richard proceeded to his next engagement, suddenly aware of the brief time remaining.

A few minutes before 10:00 AM, Orla tried to see through Richard's eyes. This act of shared senses, which had been second nature to her since birth, continually perplexed her when considering Richard's perspective. For him, as an Immortal, perceiving through another’s eyes was an unknown experience. The fact that Richard chose to come and watch her at work seemed charmingly obsolete compared to her first-hand sensory sharing habits.

In Orla's company in the lab were two workers of vastly different shapes yet shared the trait of bioluminescence, accompanied by prehensile hair. Apart from the occasional clicking or clattering of tools, the lab was silent as the workers communicated mentally. Speaking aloud was considered old-fashioned, and most of the colonists under the age of a hundred had never used their vocal cords. This reliance on mental communication furthered the feeling of unity and community among the UIC colonists, creating a more profound sense of connection than spoken words ever could.

Upon Richard's arrival through a rapidly opening and vanishing portal in the lab's wall, Orla's bioluminescent body shone with joy, her aura creating a captivating, light-dappled spectacle. The playful laughter of a male colleague, Pleiades, reverberated through her mind. Halii, the other co-worker, was so engrossed in her work on assigned disks that she remained utterly unaware of Orla's exuberance. Orla's beaming smile greeted Richard. "Hello, Richard."

"Hello, darling," Richard replied, matching her enthusiasm. Orla was dressed in a sleeveless teal sundress, her collarbone and shoulders almost entirely exposed. Richard pondered over the gravity assist she might be using to make the loose fabric contour so attractively to her figure.

Standing several centimeters taller than Richard, Orla's forehead necessitated Richard tiptoeing for a kiss, something he could've made easier by floating upwards, a thought that never occurred to Richard. Orla's hair reached around and lightly caressed the back of his neck for a few seconds.

"So, what exactly do you do here? I purposefully avoided looking anything up," confessed Richard.

She paused, either gathering her thoughts or 'remembering' something, "Well, space is vast, almost incomprehensibly so. Especially when you start considering the extra dimensions…but I digress." She explained her role in deploying small probes alongside Janice to explore space. She compared her work with Halii, who was programming her received disks, and furthered the conversation by discussing the significance of the decades-old double-slit experiment.

During their discussion, Richard gained a deeper degree of understanding and curiosity, particularly regarding Janice's omnipresence and its influence on the outcomes of their lives. He found Orla’s explanation of the observer's role in affecting experimental results thought-provoking. It led him to consider the possible impact of Janice's constant surveillance and whether her 'observation' might affect the colonists' lives similarly. The idea that the act of observing could alter reality was an intriguing existential opportunity Richard hadn't previously considered.

Orla added context about Marcus Landsbury's work, revealing that the acclaimed mathematician's research was more than just about demystifying gravity – it was a discovery that paved the way for understanding reality through ten dimensions. Richard confessed he had a simplistic understanding of Landsbury's contribution.

"His was one of the greatest breakthroughs of all time. It made all this possible," Orla said, gesturing around the room, strongly indicating the colonies as a whole. 

Richard contended, "Yeah, but it also had severe repercussions on Earth."

The discussion paused briefly, Orla’s eyes unfocusing; a sign Richard had come to recognize as her assimilating a lot of information and pondering them. She finally said, "It seems like Brenda, your ex-podmate, played a significant role in that."

Richard forcibly shifted gears, "Brenda and I were never in a pod. And things were more complex than historical accounts suggest. I’m sure there's a large chapter out there about how all of this saved my life."

Still, Orla jumped in first, "Landsbury's law theorized the existence and shape of the Eververse. And then St. Sere proved it a few years later while aboard the colony ship Pallas."

"OK, I'm gonna go over all of this in detail back in my room. Janice, please set up a file for me," Orla said. She viewed this discrepancy as another reflection of the stark differences in their lives and experiences. At times, these differences were complementary; however, on occasions like now, they served only to slow things down considerably.

"If you're willing to accept it, the key point here is that observation affects reality. Janice, not possessing true sentience, can see but not observe. Without consciousness, it's difficult to explain. Trust me on this..." Orla explained. 

Five discs, along with a wire-framed holding tower, appeared on the work desk in front of Orla, disrupting her concentration. Richard was grateful for the reprieve, using the time to digest what he had just heard.

"Perfect, okay, I gotta concentrate in a moment, but let me wrap it all up by saying that Janice does not have intuition or true randomness. I can show you tons of reports that prove that our randomness is really skewed, but it doesn't matter. So, my job is to observe the cosmos willy-nilly, pick a random location on the hull, at a random direction, and random G-force acceleration. And it somehow improves the odds that the probe will find something. Bet that twists your marvelous brain," Orla said.

"That depends. Have any probes actually found anything?" Richard asked.

"Nothing you'd consider interesting. Some rocks we didn't know about, but as I said, space is really vast, and at the speed some of these are going, the communication lag is getting really long. One of our probes could have found something yesterday, and we won't know about it for 100 years," Orla replied.

"So, you don't know if this observation stuff makes any difference or not?" Richard asked.

"Don't know, don't care, I'm a good girl that does what she's told. But the science is solid," Orla said, turning to the rubber-topped workbench.

Richard watched as Orla worked, her mind engrossed in programming the probes. He tried to wrap his mind around the concept she had explained. He used his Halo to create a couple of readout screens and toyed with a few ideas. When she had reached the fourth probe, Janice spoke aloud. "Richard, I want to inform you that I'm about to start building a spacesuit around you. I know you don't prefer this method, but in this case, it is safer and easier. I'm going to start with the boots. Here we go." 

Liquids crawled up his legs from the floor and became boots.

"Okay, now I'm..."

"Just do it, don't tell me about it," Richard interrupted.

He stood still, as though the liquid were emerging precisely from where he stood. Orla moved around as a suit formed around her. They were lightweight, skin-tight, and the membranes would transmute their CO2 to oxygen. They had built-in floaters and beacons. And as Orla finished her last probe, a flexible clear helmet formed around her head, leaving her hair on the outside. Richard couldn't see exactly how the helmet was sealed and managed on the strands.

Janice spared him his helmet until the last second; his hair was inside.

Orla took the first probe out of the holder and set it on the workbench. Her body stiffened as she took in the cosmos from the few thousand telescopes mounted around the asteroid. After a long minute, she lowered her head slightly, and little displays lit up on the probe. "And probably a ton more data in her mind," Richard thought.

"Done," she said, grabbing the five probes with her hair and securing them across her back. She chuckled and said, "Pick two numbers between 1 and 360."

The suit had no radio in it, but with Janice providing the final leg in the communication game orally, they were able to talk. Richard heard Orla's voice in his suit. He could tell that she was thinking rather than talking, and Janice was translating. While it was a perfect mimicry of her voice, something unquantifiable about the structure of the sentences clued him in.

Richard played along unquestioningly, "26 and 139."

"And away we go." A hole opened in a very odd place, and they were pushed/sucked into it, and it sealed behind them. They floated along as the tunnel grew in front of them and shrank behind them, and suddenly they were floating in space, the huge bulk of Vesta in front of them.

While Ora took this in stride, it was another reminder to Richard of the millions of ways Janice could kill him at any second. No matter where he was in the colony, it could drop him outside without warning. 

He'd often thought about the ways it could kill him. He ingested programmable matter for most meals, which could be instructed to do harmful things to his body. The very air could refuse to give itself to him. The list was endless, the incredibly safe environment they had created was also infinitely hostile if it wanted to be. All that really protected him was the hopefully immutable core that ordered Janice to protect him and all the colonists. 

Richard felt weightless and lost for a several seconds. "It's flexing," he thought to himself. Then, he was drawn towards the hull, experiencing only 1/6th of Earth's gravity. Orla's lights were far ahead of him.

Orla was right about the work being boring. For hours, Richard trailed behind her in darkness, following her pinpoints of light. She floated around, following her beacon to spots she had randomly picked on the enormous hull. Using her hair as a flashlight, she pushed her probe into the spot and waited about half a minute for tendrils to grow, holding it in place. A red light would glow when it was ready, and she'd let go.

The fourth one shot off about two minutes after she placed it. Orla said casually, "That happens sometimes, the fun of random numbers."

In all, it took seven hours to deliver the five discs. Richard wondered if she had spread them out so far on purpose, either for them to talk or for him to see how boring this task was. He had to remind himself that sneakiness had essentially been eradicated from the colonists.

The conversation was mostly steeped in physics and quantum mechanics, and a great deal of it bounced off of him. But he had Janice put it aside so they could look at it later. At one point, Orla brought up the subject of children.

Richard said, "We have ten years to make that decision. Let's see if we can stand each other in a year and revisit the conversation."

"Don't you have some sway with Janice? We could get some kind of waiver, and I could Pod early and serve my labor later," she said.

It struck Richard as odd to hear her discussing Janice as if they were not utilizing it for communication. It was clear she had not truly grasped the concept of privacy.

"And for future discussions, you should know that I prefer to pod with only one other person. I'm old-fashioned that way. Do you think you can live with those restrictions? You don't need to be in such a rush. There is a lot for us to learn through experience and conversation about each other."

He was slowly learning to read her light patterns, which, like a person's face, often conveyed unintended honesty. Based on her lights, he sensed that his response wasn't what she had hoped for. However, he knew Orla wasn't the type to sulk.

However, the last hour was mostly filled with silence.

Upon their return to the workspace, Richard couldn't shake off the feeling that it had been moved from its original position. Orla found the suggestion rather funny. She confessed that she found the concept of static, personal working spaces to be somewhat perplexing, logistically complex, and unnecessary, just as she did most of Richard's 'old ways.' Yet, despite their significant differences in age, biology, technology and outlook on life, they had established a surprising, symbiotic relationship based on mutual curiosity.