A Visitor to the Future - 136 - Nervous Energy
There was a saying in the Consortium that I had learned to like - "Those on Earth are spoiled by gravity." Living on Earth with 1G of gravity, it had always ever-present, something to be taken for granted, to the extent that my brain had been trained with a certain set of ideas about how objects should behave. If you throw a ball up, it should fall back down - and not just fall down, but at a very particular acceleration. Picture a ball being thrown into the air with your mind and note how the ball rises, slows at the top of its arc, and then falls. That mental image is very similar for every person that grows up on Earth, and is reinforced by the fact that every machine, whether coffee maker or car, operates based upon that same principle. What goes up, must come down, as the saying went.
My experiences in zero gravity had gone some way to counteracting those beliefs, and I could manage in zero gravity. However, there is a world of difference between managing and thriving in zero gravity. This applies not only on the personal level, but also the societal.
Without the luxury of having gravity to do all of the work for you, space-dwellers were forced to adapt. Tools such as the drones on the Boiling Point, spin gravity, and even things like Antonia's garden on the Promise of Sol were all part of the myriad web of inventions needed to thrive in space. One thing which I hadn't really considered was the vast amount of engineering which went into each of them.
As a basic example, imagine boiling a beaker of water, with a heat source at the bottom. On Earth, heat warms the liquid which begins to form vapor as it reaches its boiling point. That vapor forms bubbles which rise and leave the surface of the water as gas.
In microgravity environments (which Regolith had been consistently reminding me was a more accurate term than zero gravity), that was not the case. What would happen instead was the bubbles of vapor would adhere to the bottom of the beaker, prevent more, un-boiled water from reaching the heat source, and cause all sorts of problems if you're not properly prepared for it.
This was just one of the many, many problems which needed to be solved for space-based research and industry. And it had been solved - after all, I often drank tea on board the Boiling Point. Which as I write this, I realize is aptly named for this example.
All of this is to say that zero-gravity science is full of an extremely difficult set of engineering challenges which I barely understood.
"This is wizardry," I said to Sarkona, "No, I take that back, it looks like alchemy!"
The observation tube we were passing through allowed you to look into the individual lab units surrounding it. Each one was a large, rectangular space whose contents competed to be rated as the most esoteric rooms I'd ever seen. Some contained mazes of tubes which fed into central units. Others were a series of bright metal cubes which floated almost freely, tethered to the walls by thin cords. One spherical room was coated in partially reflective panels, plain except a sphere of brackish dire liquid which floated ominously in the center. There were machines of mysterious purpose with pumps and spinning devices which looked like centrifuges, dense arrays of complex components set up inside their interiors. What they were doing, I could only guess.
"An interesting phrase to use," said Formerly, voice ever-present, "I suppose to the uneducated, it might well look like that - no offence intended."
"None taken," I said. She was right, I had virtually no idea what I was looking at.
"This is Nat's first experience with offworld research," said Sarkona, "Well, excepting a few workspaces on the Promise of Sol. But none of them were set up like this."
"I can run you through what you're looking at, if you'd like?" Formerly asked.
"Please!" I said eagerly.
As Formerly explained, the labs were split up into sections, with these first dozen tube-filled rooms forming part of an overall whole called a Reprocessor, which was a term used to describe areas where chemical separation processes were performed. Complex chemical byproducts no longer needed for research were broken down into their base materials using various processes, and chemicals that were potentially volatile were mixed with others to form products suitable for low-risk long term storage.
"Our research demands complex chemical products with very little notice, which it is infeasible to stockpile," Formerly commented, "We are quite far from any large processing operations here, so an on-site Separatory is essential."
Sarkona chimed in, "In contrast, we don't have one on the Boiling Point as our needs are limited - we just have our reserves. The Consortium has the blueprints for a small one if we did need it mid-transit though."
"The English name is fairly reductionist," added Formerly, before providing the Human translation, "The literal translation of that would be 'chemical reacting facility', which is more apt."
"I can see the pipes leading into the walls, and you've pointed out the same devices in several chambers - how much of the habitat does this take up?" I asked.
"18.7 percent," said Formerly, "A figure we have reduced over the last decade from 20.3 percent. The storage chambers themselves then take up another 15 percent. We could easily have managed with the original design. You have seen how spacious our hallways are, and our quarters are similar. Place a few scientists in a confined space for long enough and they will look to optimize."
"If you think this one is big you should see the industrial ones that the Consortium uses to process raw materials," said Sarkona, "Most of them are in space, making use of the same principles that we can see here."
"Not all of them," said Formerly, with a note of pride, "We have a few bespoke processes that we're testing prior to mass replication. In fact, if you look into this laboratory, you'll see one." A small section of the wall lit up to draw my attention.
Peeking inside, a lithe and tall technician inside a hard-bodied environmental suit was floating above a cow-sized organic mass. It was a bizarre slab of beige matter with the texture of flesh which pulsed rhythmically at intervals. It was splayed out over a round, table-like dome, and I could see that six tubes entered orifices at its sides. To make the image even weirder, there was a massive heat haze throughout the room, making it seem like the entire space was wobbling. It was very, very hot in there.
"Is that an Ashworth Gut?" Sarkona asked, "I've never seen one of that size or flesh tone before. Nat, they're grown for filtering aspects of organic waste - like an artificial stomach for the Consortium's waste processing facilities."
"Some of the principles are similar," said Formerly, "In this case, though, this solution is processing aluminum."
Sarkona's brow furrowed quizzically, but they leaned closer to the window, "At what temperature?"
"Currently, 935 Kelvin. We're having issues keeping the project stable at much higher temperatures."
Sarkona's mouth hung open in awe for a moment, before curiosity made it move again, "And you're actively filtering impurities within it?"
"Yes, we are," said Formerly.
"Is that good?" I asked.
"Super, super good!" said Sarkona, excitement building, "I've never seen such a resilient example of useful bio-dev before! I've seen some aldev competitions where the objective is to create biomatter that can survive in lava, but it is rare to see them do anything useful while they're in there. Filtering impure metals, though - this has industrial potential!"
"Yes," said Formerly happily, "Though the solution's useful lifetime is far shorter than we'd like it to be, and the number of impurities it can process are limited, this will mean that traditional chemical processes will be far more efficient for the foreseeable future. Cleanup post-failure is also a major problem due to the sheer fortitude of the solution."
"What about related fields?" asked Sarkona, "Neuroviability?"
There was a hint of disappointment in Formerly's response, "Sadly, none. At least, not yet. Though we are excited to see what we can do with existing organic filtering processes which would work better at higher temperatures."
Sarkona explained, not wanting to leave me out of the conversation. "We call a set of biological components neuroviable, Nat, if we can get neurons or neuron-like cells to work in that medium. That means we could perform complex bio-development with the product. Neuroviability also helps us expand the search for intelligent alien life - after all, if we can make it work in a lab, there's potential for it to exist out there in the universe."
"A well-expressed explanation," Formerly added, "I would also add the term human-compatible to your dictionary. Human-compatible biological components can be directly added to forms including the human brain without much adjustment. Which is not to say that non-compatible materials cannot also be used - they just require some creativity to shield the human components. Many of our members use non-compatible materials in their own bodies."
"What about CIs?" I asked, "Are they as limited, if they choose to integrate non-compatible components?"
"Bio-development has historically been fixated on the human body and needs," answered Formerly, "That is where it is needed the most. Bio-dev for extreme life can be done but can best be described as an immature field, and is not without risk. For example, neural links are designed to interface between human-based minds and digital systems. When they were adapted for use in mind-to-biological proxies such as second bodies, that breakthrough was considered wondrous. The common element to almost all bio-dev is human-based nervous cells, because they are what both human and CI minds are adapted to - strange as the latter may seem. If you interfere with that formula, there can be problems. Anything from a sense of weirdness to rejection or brain-freezing."
"Brain-freezing?" I asked. I was positive she wasn't referring to the ice-cream headache.
"A colloquialism which describes a number of side-effects relating to the use of non-human or sufficiently modified nerve cells, both inside the body or when connected to a biological proxy using them, including seizures, strokes, amnesia and phantom body part sensations."
"That sounds disturbing," I said.
"It is," acknowledged Formerly glumly.
I thought of one further example, "But if these side-effects relate to not using human-based nervous cells, how do mechanical proxies work?" I asked. "I've used one before and I'm fairly certain they don't have biological components."
Formerly's explanation was immediate, "You're correct, most of them do not. However, they simulate them near-exactly. When a mechanical proxy touches a surface, it runs the input through an emulation process before passing that input through the neural link. To your brain, you simply think the impulse came from a human body part. For example, when a neural link simulates a display or camera link, it is actually simulating a human eye looking at that display or feed."
"For combat proxies the emulation actually happens outside the proxy," added Sarkona, "So the proxy receives the input, the proxy sends it to Consortium computing resources, the Consortium runs it through emulation, and then finally, it gets sent to your neural link. That's because it's much safer when your precautions can't get pummeled to bits."
I floated there, eyes wide for a second. I was constantly being blown away by how much work was required to enjoy the things I'd seen in the Consortium so far. Nothing was ever simple.
Sarkona patted my shoulder and I turned to face them, "On the plus side, that's why controlling a proxy seems so natural - after a bit of practice, at least. Because the experience has to be designed to make it feel as natural as possible."
"Does anyone know why only human or simulated nerve cells work so well?" I asked.
"There are lots of theories," said Sarkona, "Many of which are hard to verify, because of all the risks involved in testing them. But really, there's not that much rush to investigate this area because simulated neurons work so well. If you want to do something really wild in terms of self-bio-dev, I'd advise not even bothering even using natural neurons - use simulated ones. In many cases, it's easier that way anyway."
"Indeed," said Formerly, "Many of our members do exactly that. And that neatly brings us back to my initial point - we see the difference between using a mature and known technology versus an experimental one."
I glanced forward through the window again and realized we'd been floating here so long the biohazard-suited technician had noticed us and was staring in our direction. They gave us a wave, which we returned, and then we moved on.