All-Patron Reward: Original Draft, Grand Central Arena: Chapter 1

As with many books, Grand Central Arena went through some changes. The largest obvious change was that the original draft starts with the Holy Grail about ready for launch, while the final version introduces us to all the crewmembers before we get to the action. In some ways, I regret the change, because it really, really slows down the start of the book -- but without it, we have much less connection to the characters. 

Still, that original beginning still exists, and I present it to you here; next month will be another piece or two from the original draft. You'll also see a few other changes that might be of interest!

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Chapter 1.

"Why exactly are we designing this experimental ship to be like a giant coffin?"

Steve Franceschetti gave her a grave look. "To save on the costs of burial later, of course." He said in a faux-Transylvanian accent, dark eyes twinkling.

"Oh, ha-ha." Ariane said. "These low ceilings just give me the creeps. With all the Edols they're putting into the project, why the hell scrimp on the size of the thing?"

"It's not a matter of the e-dollars, it's a matter of the physics." As one of the directing concept engineers, the diminuitive Fransceschetti had a lot more familiarity with the physics than Ariane, who was – even she admitted – probably nothing more than a psychological security blanket for this mission. Almost nothing required a living pilot any more, but the unique circumstances of this particular mission made it worthwhile to include someone with the actual skill… just in case. "And if you'd bother to consult your – oh, that's right," he said, putting hands to cheeks in mock-startlement, "you don't have an AIsage."

"Not an implanted one, and I don't intend to get one." Ariane said. "My brain may connect, but nothing but me lives there."

Steve gave her the usual look of "you Luddite reactionary" that always accompanied this discussion and shrugged. "Your loss. Anyway, the generation of the supposed FTL field predicted by the Kanzaki-Locke General Unified Theory, and as instantiated in the Sandrisson generators we've used in the probes previously, work on a… well, call it an s-curve, where the power demands start out low, then hit an upswing that gets REALLY steep, then flattens out. Unfortunately, while the prior probes were on the low end and could be run from high-power C-Nano burst cells for the experiment duration, at this point w're hitting the high middle of the upswing curve. We'll need a major fusion reactor to get the field working and to invert it again in the proper sequence. On the plus side, if this works according to design, the top flattened part of the curve is accessible with antimatter-matter generators or maybe a singularity engine. Expensive but doable by any major company or government."

"So why not just go the whole route?"

Steve shrugged. "Because right now we're still trying to prove it works, of course. Why build a gargantuan demonstration ship which will take a hundred times the resources before you're sure it'll work? The probes haven't given us real clear results, after all."

That much Ariane Austin knew. It was, in fact, the reason that Holy Grail was being built. The FTL test probes… worked, and then they didn't, exactly. The probes were sent out, activated the Sandrisson Drive, and disappeared. The problem was what happened afterwards. Sometimes they reappeared only a very short distance from their disappearance, sometimes quite a long ways. They almost always DID reappear, and experimental animals like rats on board showed no ill effects. Sensor suites on board – including imaging devices in spectra from the far-radio bands all the way to hard gamma, vibration, field-distortion gauges, gravity wave detectors, the whole nine yards – unfortunately seemed to get absolutely nothing. The lag of time between activation and reappearance was related to certain activation parameters of the field which, according to theory, should be the equivalent of trying to go faster or farther. "I thought someone had determined there was a pattern to the reappearances."

"That someone would be me."

Ariane turned, startled. Steve of course didn't seem surprised – his AIsage undoubtedly updated him on people's comings and goings regularly. Ariane preferred to rely on her own senses, primitive as they were. "Doctor Sandrisson?"

Dr. Simon Sakuraba Sandrisson was, if anything, more striking in person than she'd thought him in video. Several centimeters taller than her own 188, slender, with a narrow face and the slightly slanted almond eyes showing his joint Norse-Japanese heritage, he had pure white hair that cascaded past his shoulders and round-lensed glasses that were either purely for show, or that he might use for reality overlay projection; in this era of biotailoring he certainly couldn't have anything wrong with his eyesight, and despite the white hair he was clearly not much older than Ariane herself. He nodded to Ariane. "A pleasure to meet you, Commander Austin. I hope you will not find it amiss if I hope that we will not need your services?"

She allowed a little smile. "Well, given it's your drive system, I guess I can permit that."

"Not mine, at least not entirely. But I would not argue that I have contributed the majority of the design concepts and directed the AIsims involved. I still think it's a mistake to prevent the AIs from being expanded to… but that's another subject area, and I try to avoid politics." He was surveying the control room (Ariane would have preferred the old-fashioned term "bridge") of Holy Grail and seemed to find it quite satisfactory. "To return to the original subject, there is indeed a pattern to the probes, one which took most of the entire run of 200 tests to show. In essence, the return loci are a perfect normal distribution around the departure point, with the center or median of the distribution shifting depending on how we adjust the drive parameters which, I still believe, are essentially the determinants of distance and speed for the drive."

"I see." Ariane said, brushing her own blue-tinted black hair out of her face. "The probes ARE going farther, on the average, when you adjust those parameters. And they are, on average, all going FTL."

"Oh, definitely. Leaving aside discussions of relativity and simultanaeity which would complicate the matter, especially for one without an AIsage for support," she winced at the casual condescension in Sandrisson's otherwise friendly monologue, "examination of the data on the transition of the probes from one point to another show that they take a small, but finite, time to perform the transition, at least from our point of view, and the interval involved is at base on the close order of one-thousandth the time that a radio signal would require to traverse the same distance. It's not quite clear at this point whether the time interval is the same on board the probes."

"I know." Ariane grinned. "The onboard sensors didn't seem to return all the data we expected, and it's fuzzy just how much time passed for the systems. So just in case the reason the probes come out at random… well, sorta-random… locations is because some of the automated systems fail, they're sending along a living pilot with actual trained skills instead of AI-duplicated training. The animals all seemed fine. And that's why we're also stocked up for up to a couple of weeks, as we're hoping to make a jump that, if we are limited to lightspeed or less, would take a while." She gave him a challenging look. "I do know the relevant material that will affect my job, Doctor."

Sandrisson's glasses glinted opaquely for a moment as he tilted his head. "My apologies, Commander. I see that in this case you were specifically chosen for your… independent preferences. And if we dohave need of your services, I will owe you a much more involved and detailed apology."

"Apology accepted." She glanced at Steve. "But still, I was right; they're just being cheap. They could build even the big version with the spare change kicking around on some of the really bigprojects like the Venusian Reconstruction."

"It's the principle of the thing, I suppose. Just because it's not all that hard to make something bigger isn't a good enough reason to just go ahead and do so." He looked abstracted for a moment, his AIsage – embedded artificial-intelligence data accessor, organizer, and all-around mental companion – giving him updates on the project status. "If it'll make you feel better, we can easily project holoimages to enlarge the apparent space."

"Actually, yes, that would make me feel better. If it looks roomier but doesn't cause me to bump into a bulkhead at the wrong time, that is."

"Heh. No, the kinesthetic inputs can be tweaked to make sure your physical actions still conform to the real space."

Ariane concentrated a moment and connected with Holy Grail's onboard dataweb. Her own AIsage, Mentor, hovered in the conceptual visualized space, appearing as a glowing ball of energy that showed multiple complex winding patterns, as she'd defined him years ago. She didn't need him for what she was about to do, but she did give the equivalent of a smile and nod as she accessed the current mission status data. Mentor flickered in acknowledgement. She knew that some people considered her a double reactionary – firstly because she was, honestly speaking, afraid of having some other thinking presence actually inside her own head, and second because she nonetheless treated AIs like Mentor as though they were people. The debate about their status, their treatment, and what their capabilities should be allowed to reach had been going on for more than a century, and showed no sign of dying out. But Mentor was, to her, a real person, even if limited by his nature and derived from her own whimsical choices in design.

There had been updates to the mission profile. She glanced over in startlement. "You are coming along, Doctor?"

"I certainly am, Commander. It is not often that such a spectacular theory will have, one hopes, a spectacular demonstration such as this one, and even more rare for the originator of the theory and device to participate. Locke died before publication on the seminal paper of course, and Kanzaki, alas, is also no longer with us; I would like to think that I go in her place as well as my own. I would be a fool to give up the chance. After all, the probes have shown that at worst I need fear only minor embarrassment as we return to our own space with no effective FTL travel. There are precisely eight slots on the crew of Holy Grail, and there was debate on the last slot; I have effectively eliminated that debate.

"Thus, the crew will consist of yourself – pilot and titular captain of Holy Grail, Dr. Franceschetti," he nodded towards Steve, "as chief conceptual engineer and system overseer, Dr. Marc DuQuesne for power systems, Mr. Thomas Cussler in charge of nanomaintenance systems, Dr. Gabrielle Caine for lifesystems maintenance and – in case of the worst – medical emergency treatment –"

"Gabrielle Caine? Why that sneaky – she never told me she was on this mission!" Ariane grinned, shaking her head. "I mean, there can't be two medical doctors named Gabrielle Caine…"

"There are in fact two." Steve inserted smugly, having checked in the split instant using the near-omniscience of an AIsage connected to the System dataweb. "However, the other one lives in Zubrin – the Mars settlement, not the orbital – so I'll bet that this is the one you know."

"Wiseass. If you checked that, you already know she's the right one."

"Attended your elementary school?"

"Yeah. Sorry for interrupting the monologue, Doc—"

"Simon, please. Call me Doctor in formal settings, but not here." The brilliant white smile matched his hair. "Besides, you already can access the roster. I just like to talk, I suppose. Comes of doing lectures most of the year. Do you know the rest of our little crew?"

"I've met Cussler a couple times – he's great at his work, a bit of a transcendence freak though. Still, that's a reasonable focus for a nanowizard like him. He's in charge of our matter rendering installation too, right?"

"Insofar as anyone has to be – although Dr. Caine has authority over it for production of any medical or other emergency supplies." Steve said. "Since we're not expecting emergencies and even the longest projected mission time is only about a month, it's really just a standard home unit – an AIWish 7, actually – with the safety and security interlocks disabled."

Ariane nodded. The nanotechnological restructuring units which permitted replacement components to be created from bulk matter of appropriate elemental composition, or which could repair damaged objects flawlessly, were of course designed with limitations that prevented children and civilians from creating weapons or hazardous materials outside of a set range. She returned to the crew list, considering the next name. "Never met DuQuesne."

"I have." Steve volunteered. "Tall, built like a buttressed wall – definitely my type. Unfortunately," he sighed dramatically, "I'm not his. Knows his stuff, of course, and he's actually kinda like you, Ariane – he doesn't keep his AIsage brain-resident all the time. Not because it gives him the creeps, though; he says he thinks anyone who does is letting himself get soft."

Simon gave an explosive laugh. "So it's better to be s—" He caught himself and bowed again. "My apologies."

Ariane suppressed the sharp annoyance, not unmixed with the tinge of uncertainty and fear that the other was right, that always accompanied those reactions. "It's okay. I'm used to it. I know it's like religion. Maybe it is, in a way. And religious types always look crazy to the outsiders." She went back to the safer subjects. "Lessee… of course I know Carl Edlund, he's drives and controls – installed them to my specs, in fact, so that they'll suit me perfectly. He was my drive design artist for the race circuit." Aerospace races were, of course, one of the few areas in which live, unassisted human pilots were commonly used, and had been Ariane's profession until now. "Laila Canning… No, never met her."

"Research biologist." Steve supplied.

"Oh, her." Despite never meeting, she knew that she and Canning shared at least one trait; given the projected shortness of the trip and lack of any detectable effects on the test animal, Dr. Laila Canning was also considered a good candidate for 'least useful member of the crew'. She shot an inquiry to Mentor.

Indeed, all of them have either arrived or will arrive in the next two hours.Mentor could have simply channeled information to her mind – and in emergencies, he did. However, he was programmed to respect her quirks, and did so by speaking to her mind. With the speed possible only through direct brain-computer interface, the simulated deep resonant voice ran through a summary of facts and images associated with each of the crewmembers Ariane didn't know well, and where they were assigned on board Holy Grail.

"It looks like we are a go for launch in a day or so." She said finally. "And like we're all responsible for arguing over who cooks dinner if the automation fails, since we have no one assigned to that duty."

Sandrisson gave a genuine long laugh. "Now there is a vital concern!"