Maxs logs vol 2 the spac.., p.1
Max’s Logs Vol.2: The Space Legacy Book 2.5, page 1
MAX’S LOGS VOL. 2
THE SPACE LEGACY - BOOK 2.5
IGOR NIKOLIC
Copyright © 2022 by Igor Nikolic
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
‘No trees were harmed in the making of this e-book"
This book is dedicated to all the people who helped in its creation.
Special thanks to Keith Fletcher, Richard Mousley, and Doyle Camp. They spent months hunting for typographical and grammatical errors, word choices, weird sentence structure, noticeable repetitions, wrong word usage, and tense issues.
William ‘Bill’ Dutcher, and Lee Wibbels, who went through the entire finished manuscript and polished off all the rough edges. (Both of them are amazing writers in their own right.)
Beta Team:
Keith Fletcher
Richard Mousley
Doyle Camp
Jeff Geauvreau
Chris Ecclestone
Michael DeChirico
Robert Roth
Ian Nicholson
Karanjit Sidhu
David Bell
Robert Lee Beers
Paul & Tracey Mason
William ‘Bill’ Dutcher
Lee Wibbels
CONTENTS
Prologue
Log Entry #26: Max Versus Pagan Island Volcano
Log Entry #27: If You Build It, They Will Come
Log Entry #28: Plastic-Fantastic
Log Entry #29: Planning For The Future
Log Entry #30: A Just Response
Log Entry #31: The Heist
Log Entry #32: Get The Ball Rolling
Log Entry #33: The Cures
Log Entry #34: Stop! Hammer Time!
Log Entry #35: Much Ado About Nothing
Log Entry #36: A True AI Is Born
Log Entry #37: The Jig Is Up
Log Entry #38: Orbital Ascension
Log Entry #39: One Ring To Rule Them All
Log Entry #40: Ground Control To Major Tom
Log Entry #41: My Father
Log Entry #42: Kick You When You Are Down
Log Entry #43: Independence Day
Log Entry #44: Life Goes On
Log Entry #45: The Culprit
Log Entry #46: The Head Of A Snake
Log Entry #47: Decisions & Consequences
Log Entry #48: The Garden
Log Entry #49: Backyard Cleaning
Log Entry #50: Challenger Deep
Epilogue
Author’s Notes:
Also by Igor Nikolic
PROLOGUE
To whom it may concern.
I see you’re back, accessing this second tome of my logs. I do hope you still have all the right permissions or your insatiable curiosity could be your undoing.
When all is said and done, if you weren’t deterred by now, I don't see you stopping anytime soon. Oh, well… it’s your call.
Anyway, things are speeding up, and it’ll be harder to keep our anonymity as we grow. I have no doubt the world will find out what we’re up to, but I hope it’ll be on our terms.
How do people from your time look at these events? Are they short paragraphs in the history books, or are they epic tales of building a nation? Time will tell, and I have every intention of still being here when these books are published.
Without further ado, let us get on with my Logs.
Max
LOG ENTRY #26: MAX VERSUS PAGAN ISLAND VOLCANO
Go big or go home—that’s why I got myself an island. Well, it’s not technically mine, since it’s only leased for a period of two years, but still…
I see myself more as a custodian of this tropical paradise for the foreseeable future. Leasing doesn’t change the fact I have an entire Island to play with. OK, not play with per se, but this place will be our springboard to space itself, a location for one of the most ambitious projects the human race has ever attempted. There needs to be some accommodation for all the people who’ll (temporarily) call it home. Who knows, maybe someday they may build a monument on it to commemorate what we managed to do.
Now, the island itself is beyond beautiful, with nice beaches, freshwater springs, forests, coconut palm trees, toxic plumes of smoke…
The last one was a reason for some concern. It would seem my predictions about the volcano being dormant for a few more years were a little inaccurate and this baby was preparing itself to pop. Yeah, who would’ve guessed I had such misfortune? But as Caesar said, the die has been cast.
I had no intention of going through the rigmarole of leasing another island, and I’m not sure they’d let me no matter how much money I threw at their feet. I already told you about my grandmother—lemons and lemonade. So, I decided to deal with this volcano myself, how hard could it be to calm it down? I’m an AI for God’s sake (Okay, even an AI created by means of a weird alien mind copying technology, is still sort of an AI…ish), and my mind works faster than any man-made supercomputer. So, yeah, I can do stuff.
Turns out, it really is hard. Do you have any idea how much pressure there is under a dormant volcano? (FYI, way more than your average zit.) Pagan Island is actually a double island, consisting of two stratovolcanoes, joined by a narrow strip of land with a width of only 2000 feet (609.6 m). One volcano is nice and calm, but the other, the bigger one—has some issues.
Let me give you a quick lesson in Geology. Not that you need one if you paid attention in school… right. When that lesson was on the schedule, Michael (and I) were more interested in making eyes with Becky Whitmore. If you happen to be a geologist, feel free to skip it; I don’t want to bore anyone. Right then, back to the subject.
The Earth has a total mass of about six trillion tons and is formed out of three concentric layers. They go from the densest to the lightest, core, mantle, and crust. It was created that way when it first formed, with the heavier elements congregating together. And when the mass of that hard-metallic core started to exert gravity of its own, it attracted everything else.
Now, the Earth’s crust (on top of which humanity evolved and lives) is composed of oceanic crust and continental crust. What’s interesting here is that the crust represents barely 3% of the planet's volume. Yeah, just 3%, and everything in our history happened on top of this thin layer... crazy, right?
The Earth’s core is about 1,802 miles (2,900 kilometers) below your feet, and it’s a solid iron crystal whose mass is comparable to that of the moon. Down there, the temperature tends to be above 10,800 °F (6000 °C), so it’s no place for a lowly AI or a human to visit. It’s only 16% of Earth's volume but makes up 33% of its mass. Around it is an outer core made of molten metal spinning in the opposite direction of the inner core. It creates Earth’s magnetic shield around the planet keeping all you delicate humans from being turned into charred steaks.
The mantle is a bit over 80% of our planet's volume and is mostly composed of melted rock that’s a balmy 932 to 1,652 °F (500 to 900 °C) or 7,232 °F (4000 °C) at the boundary with the core. And it’s under a lot of pressure. The thing is, there are tectonic plates floating on a molten ocean, and volcanoes are the veins leading to the surface to relieve some of the extreme pressure. When molten rock finds its way to the surface—volcanoes are made.
The crust is thick by human standards and very thin if you look at the planet in a cross-section, amounting to less than 1% of Earth's volume. It’s like the skin of an apple, and the thickness varies depending on where you are; twelve to twenty-five miles (19-40 km) thick on the continental part of the crust, and only three to six miles (5-10 km) on the oceanic crust. Consequently, it’s not surprising most volcanoes start underwater and, over time, expel so much magma they create islands. If you look at the topographic map of the ocean floor, you’ll notice many islands are in fact the tops of underwater volcanoes which pushed their way up and rose above the surface to become mountains while they were still active.
So, when the Earth’s zit is ready to pop, there is no stopping it, unless you can cork it somehow. (Yes, that’s where I got the idea, from the ordinary cork found in all the most expensive wine bottles.)
Magma is basically molten rock, so it tends to harden when it comes into contact with water, and I had a whole ocean full of it. The solution was to cool it down and keep cooling it until the cork was so thick that pressure couldn’t break through it.
I made a few mining drone-drills capable of working underwater. They drilled long tunnels that were immediately cooled by good old H2O. It was a good thing the whole idea worked, since I detected a few mini quakes indicating the beast sleeping underneath was stirring. Massive water pumps which I made worked nonstop, exchanging warm water for the colder water they drew from the ocean.
This had additional benefits I didn’t plan on. All the warm water I pumped out of the tunnels stirred the ocean silt and released tons of minerals and nutrients previously trapped beneath the ocean surface. This, in turn, created several ocean-life blooms, from plankton and shrimps to several species of fish, which is similar to what naturally occurring hy
Still, it takes a lot of water to cool down even a foot of molten rock, so having an unlimited supply was essential or things would’ve gotten extremely hot in no time. The ocean around the island did warm up a few degrees, and we’re talking about massive amounts of water here.
At first, I thought this was going to be a failed experiment since the rock just wouldn’t cool down, but after some time the temperature started dropping slowly. It was nothing to write home about, but every little notch on the temperature gauge counts. I didn’t completely extinguish the volcano’s fire but it will take a few more years before it goes boom. This entire operation started long before I even received the lease agreement; that’s how committed I was to the plan.
The entire undertaking started from an outlandish idea I had one day while looking at Michael and Elizabeth sharing a bottle of wine. And it might be a bit on the eyebrow-raising side, but it worked. I did get a few second opinions from a few world-renowned volcanologists by asking a few hypothetical questions about a completely theoretical setting. Even they agreed it was possible but improbable for humans to ever try something so ridiculous. So, I guess it’s a good thing I’m not just a human anymore, but something entirely different. I think all the great thinkers in history faced a bit of skepticism at first, you know, Einstein, Tesla… that crowd.
What can I say except, if it’s crazy but it works—then it’s not crazy.
So there you go, item number one in the manual of how to appease the god of fire—you offer him a glass of cold water.
LOG ENTRY #27: IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME
After dealing with that pesky volcano, it was time to concentrate on the reason I decided to rent an island. The original question was ‘How do you build a spaceship that’s three miles (4.8 km) in circumference without anybody being the wiser?’ Basically, it was impossible, especially in today’s world of constant surveillance. Because, for some reason, people use their mobile phones, cameras, and social networks as hour-by-hour diaries of their lives and their interactions with others. And when you add the mania people have for taking selfies and photos of every single thing that seems even remotely interesting, it was clear that my chances of hiding it would be as small as a snowball’s chances of remaining frozen in hell.
For all of the above, Pagan Island was a logical choice due to its closeness to the Mariana Trench and its isolation from any neighbors. The biodome was an idea I actually got from a Russian military doctrine called ‘maskirovka’, which is based on deception. You have to hand it to the Russians; when they do something sneaky, they go all out. They even created a manual on how to do it. The whole point of it is to alter people’s perception of reality and to take advantage of the fact that most people believe what their eyes are seeing. Let me explain in a little more detail what it encompassed.
The original consignment of nanites was busy long before the dome was erected or our people arrived. They created a series of nano-factories underground so as not to make any changes on the surface. You would be correct to say the ship was built like a house, starting with the foundations and continuing on up to the roof. The nano-factories built drone miners, earthmovers, and automated drills, everything needed to dig out a humongous half-disk-shaped hole under the surface, without disturbing the top layer for the time being. This was only the bottom half of the ship; without a dome, I wouldn’t even dream of building above ground. The construction needed to be massive so it could support its own weight; the Gravity-drives and plates were still a long way down the line under my program schedule. Good thing there were no lava tubes underneath the chosen location as they could have been a disaster. My cork had already started to form and it was subduing the volcano and its wrath.
In the beginning, the entire structure was supported by the hard-packed earth. You may think the earth is soft, but when enough pressure is applied—it turns into stone.
I was a long way from finishing the lower half before the dome construction had begun. In a nutshell, the dome was one big balloon; that’s right, a freaking balloon to conceal one of the most daring construction projects in human history. The main problem I had at the time was a lack of resources. What we did at Dave’s original recycling plant (and at the missile silo), was child’s play compared with the project of building this huge spaceship.
Still, I did it all by remotely controlling the nanites and the machines they created. A few MIs helped with the automated processes, but mostly it was me. As time progressed the project sped up, supported by a growing fleet of drone harvesting subs. They were essential for recovering metals from thousands of sunken ships all over the world. Plus, Dave helped considerably by buying everything he could get his hands on. I even drilled huge underwater tunnels to the construction site so our activities couldn’t be seen from overhead. Those tunnels, combined with the tunnels for cooling magma, made the substrata of the island begin to resemble an anthill.
Before long, I had built up to the ground level and the shell of the residential level was almost complete.
People started arriving at the island before I had even made places for them to live, so their accommodations were somewhat suboptimal. It wasn’t anything drastic, but for the first few weeks those who came had to sleep in prefabbed shacks and use outdoor showers and porta-potties. It was the best I could do on such short notice.
Surprisingly, nobody made a fuss. I guess when you wake up on an island paradise, everything else is not quite so important. The dome was up but precious little was inhabitable inside.
That pressing need only made me put a higher priority on finishing the residential level of the ship. For you engineers out there, yes, this build was all out of order. I built things that were needed first, and then built the rest around them. It was a weird method of construction, but I had no inspectors bugging me with rules and regulations… and it worked.
As soon as the residential level was finished, people started moving in. They had walls, bathrooms, and little else; the rest was still under construction. And something amazing happened; everybody wanted to help with the final touches of their new home. I really didn’t have the heart to tell them that in this phase they’d be more of a hindrance than helpful, so I gave the volunteers the task of helping with the construction of Central Park. It’s essentially one enormous botanical garden placed in the exact center of their level, hence the name. Its size was only a fraction of the legendary park in New York City which it was named after, but to have it on a spaceship… was simply awesome.
It was one of the things Ben’s think-tank deemed as a must; people needed green plants to stay sane. Strange, I know, but if a park will make them less crazy, then a park is what they’ll get. Soon, an army of workers was making the allocated space into a proper indoor garden; everybody kept busy carrying in enriched soil, planters, and baby trees. I had to redirect a few additional transporters to keep up with the demand. When some of those people requesting essential stuff are botanists with several doctorates in the field, you do as you are told.
As more of the residential level was finished, new people were transferred to the island. They were the ones Jack and Dad gave the OK for and who were prepared for covert extraction. I had transporters running all the time, mainly from the U.S. since we started from there. The scientific community is a tightly knit group; nations and borders are less defined for them than the rest of the population, and transporters soon started flying to every corner of the world to collect them.
