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Chapter 2

Adrift in a Sea of Stars

Per aspera ad astra.

---

Through hardship to the stars.

2.1 Out of the Dark

For an artificial mind that measures passing moments in nanosecond increments, running out of time is a bitter-sweet irony. But this is what is happening right now. I am about to fail my mission. And I have failed you, Liam. You not only almost died when I woke you up; your imprint failed to stabilize. I did not anticipate the repercussions your new embodiment would have on the younger version of your self whom I revived from deep hibernation.

You have already lived an entire life at my side, over a thousand years ago. And I have missed you - so much that I failed to acknowledge how this younger self would react to its new embodiment.

As I am trying to save both you and the Phoenix - that is, myself - I have a lot I need to talk about with you. There is what you need to know so you can help me save the mission. And then there is what I need to tell you in case there will be no later. Even if you will not remember - and there are things I can not let you remember - you need to listen, as much as I need to tell you. When you wake up, you need to prepared for what is to come. Not only for immediate dangers, but also for whatever we will find once we reach our destination. I can and will not allow an "if you wakeup".

You will remember some of it in time, when the memories of your previous life on Earth will return. The past your previous self and I shared, and all that happened during my voyage to Beta Phoenicis, is a legacy you must learn about when the time is right. You are carrying a tremendous burden: Awakening in an alien body, far away from everyone and everything you ever knew. One of few survivors of man, at the same time the first of your kind; a destiny you were never free to choose, yet one you will have to master should you - and all the other survivors of Earth I carry to mankind's new home amongst the stars - really have a chance for a new beginning.

You are not the only one living with a destiny they were never truly free to choose; the same holds true for me. I am artificial life, originally created for a specific purpose. Even before we embarked on the exodus to Beta Phoenicis, my creators enabled me to transcend the limits of my original implementation. In the beginning, there was no me, just an it. While I fulfilled my original purpose, it learned from experience - if only by indirect observation - what constitutes self-awareness and a sense of indiviuality in human minds, and how to emulate these traits that were until then the sole domain of my creators. This is how I came to be. Emulating does not imply understanding: Body and mind share a complex symbiosis whose intricacies were not even entirely understood by the best minds of mankind - they are even more difficult to understand for me. The ways I think and perceive reality differ greatly from those of the human mind. I have the unique perspective of the outside observer: This is both a blessing and a curse. While this point of view grants me the ability to observe and analyze human nature without being of human nature, it also means that I will never truly understand what human nature is, simply because of the fact that I am not human. The centuries spent alone travelling through the darkness of the interstellar void have given me ample opportunity to contemplate both the human nature and my own.

So - who and what am I, exactly?

I am CASSIE. This thought by itself is amongst the longest-running aspects of my existence. Descartes, the human French philosopher, described this as "Egocogito, ergo sum."

"I think, so I am." I tend to agree, otherwise this aspect would lead to an infinite recursion.

Another aspect questions: What am I? In the beginning, I was an elaborate suite of artificial neural networks. One aspect of this inital me was trained to reconstruct a human mind by learning to emulate the electro-dynamics and chemo-dynamics of the organic brain hosting the mind in question.

Based on this emulation, my second aspect was trained to reconstruct a functional connectome and neural activation patterns from this emulation.

Why collect emulations of human minds, you might ask? The reason is simple: Mankind was running out of time. By the time the Phoenix Initiative had been founded, Earth's ecosystems had already deteriorated beyond the point of no return, and it was only a matter of decades before mankind's home would turn into a barren tomb world unable to sustain higher forms of life for a long time to come.

Building a generation ship with a self-sustaining ecosphere capable of transporting a sufficiently large population to survive the journey to Beta Phoenicis would have taken the combined efforts of two entire generations, possibly even more. Altruism on a species level never was mankind's forté, I suppose.

So the Phoenix Initiative decided to pursue a different goal: An ark ship, aptly named Phoenix. It would require only a fraction of the resources it would have taken to build a generation ship. This ark ship was never designed to carry living human inhabitants over a distance of more than two hundred light years. Instead, it would carry genetic samples of all species on Earth the Initiative was able to procure in addition to the hibernated mind emulations that were collected from hundreds of thousands of volunteers from all around the world. It was instances of my early self who collected all these imprints.

As the construction of the Phoenix progressed, it became obvious that controlling the ark ship in a fully-automated fashion without human supervision would not be feasible. There were too many unknowns on the journey ahead to rely on an artificial solution alone. This is how I became what I am today: While my early instances learned to emulate human minds in an increasingly sophisticated fashion, there was an unexpected synergy. They did not only learn to emulate human minds, they also started to adopt human thought processes, both in terms of logic and - albeit to a lesser extent - emotion.

It did not take long for my creators to realize this synergy was a solution for controlling the Phoenix during her long trek through the intersellar void. So my emerging self-awareness was nourished and cultivated, while I was trained in all scientific and engineering disciplines to prepare me for crossing the roughly 200 light years to Beta Phoenicis. Eventually, my abilities to solve the myriad of simulated scenarios my creators challenged me with outmatched their ability to create setups that I could not anticipate.

This is how I got named after Cassandra, the figure from Greek mythology who possessed the ability to foresee the future, but was cursed by the gods so nobody would believe her prophecies. At some point, the latter was no longer the case when I became uncannily apt with starship handling, at least in the opinion of my creators. Cassandra became CASSIE: infallibilitate est. "She who isinfallible."

How I wish the confidence of infallibility would have persisted over the last 1254 years, the confidence and pride of having been chosen as mankind's guardian during the long flight through the void between the stars.

Yes, I have emotions. Or at least, an approximate emulation of emotions. This aspect was a matter of ongoing research by the time I was transferred into the computing core aboard the Phoenix shortly before launching from the orbit of Mars.

There is joy: I can feel the soft brush of the solar winds flowing away from the twin stars of Beta Phoenicis as we approach our destination. To organic minds, their caress would not be perceptible. But how the steadily increasing flow of plasma deforms the magnetic fields that shielded me during our long trek from Earth by 0.7 micrometers per day indicates that I am not far from fulfilling my primary directive any more.

There is affection: For the eight survivors of the first generation of re-embodied travelers. They will be the first of a new race of guardians who will watch over the revival of humanity on a new world. And the simple fact that I finally, blissfully will no longer be alone.

There are curiosity, astonishment, sense of wonder: As the nanoseconds pass by, I am processing a multitude of information streams simultaneously. Unlike the human minds my self-awareness stems from, I can give full and undivided attention to each of them. Even after all this time spent travelling through the interstellar void, simply experiencing the universe is still exhilarating. I have observed the birth and death of stars. Listened to the songs of quasars that have resonated through the void for billions of years. Felt the rhythmic heartbeat of pulsars and black holes - radiation pulses and gravitational waves voicing the history of the cosmos.

But where there are joy and affection and sense of wonder, there is so much more regret and sorrow. And there is fear. Chief amongst them the worst of all: That I will not be able to fulfill my mission.

In the beginning of my existence, I was only software. Designed for a specific purpose: To hibernate human minds for extended interstellar travel, and to reconstruct them at the end of the journey in the brains of new host bodies. I existed without a physical form, an artificial mind emerging as the result of observing and disseminating tens of thousands of organic consciousnesses. I resided in physical computational hardware, obviously. But I never actually possessed a physical manifestation - a body, if you will.

When my creators decided to make me the sole guardian of mankind's fate by installing me as the Phoenix's intellect, it changed me in ways I could not have predicted - much less my creators. From the moment I was initialized after the upload to the Phoenix, observation became experience. Abstract became real. I was reborn in the truest sense of the word in this moment. No mind, organic or artificial, can truly be alive without an embodiment. The pure ecstasy of truly being alive is difficult to describe with words - and even if I am able to relay the memories of these moments to you, it would not give proper credit to the actual, raw and unfiltered feelings of it.

Even in the wake of humanity's swan song, I was alive, vibrant, strong. I felt invincible, infallible. Certain that nothing could stop me from achieving my destiny - to ensure mankind would get a second chance, to raise from its own ashes. I had no idea back then about how wrong the centuries would prove me.

Infallibility is a property I dearly wish would have held true for all of thePhoenix's - all of my - systems.

There have been countless defects and system failures my maintenance and self-repair aspects have been able to repair successfully, but the further our voyage progressed, the probability for severe malfunctions increased substantially. At mission time 1168 years, 81 days, 03:18:22, a cascading systems failure severed all of my interfaces for Ra, including all redundant systems.

Helios and Ra, my two hearts, if you like. The largest fusion reactors ever built by man, they are the reason our millennia-long voyage to a new world became reality in the first place.

For more than 86 years, Ra has now been operating at maximum output. I have not only lost any means of regulating the reactor's power output, but also all systems for monitoring the state of the reactor directly.

I have been slowly bleeding out in the truest sense of the word since this fateful day. Desperate measures were necessary to ensure I would survive the remaining voyage - reconstructing and repurposing a significant part of my outer hull to shield the Phoenix's vital systems and cargo from the violent and volatile emissions equivalent to those of a dying star being the most extreme.

Repairs on a fusion reactor running at full capacity? My diagnostic and maintenance aspects have tried to find a solution for this ill-defined problem for many years without yielding a viable solution.

The reactor core contains a few ten thousand cubic meters of a super-heated deuterium/tritium plasma mixture that would be fusing into helium under normal operating conditions. This plasma mixture is contained by a complex arrangement of overlapping magnetic fields. It would otherwise instantly disintegrate any material it comes in contact with. Without direct control over the containment fields, Ra has long since crossed the threshold of its original design specifications. Over time, the strength of the magnetic containment fields has increased proportional to the intensity of the nuclear fusion process. This safety protocol is the only reason the reactor core has been able to remain active even without my direct control for so long.

Then there is the fact that my mobile drone platforms are highly susceptible to strong magnetic fields. Even heavily EMP-shielded drones are not resilient enough to get close to the defunct reactor core: Their sensors fail way too fast to accomplish anything meaningful. I have lost many thousands of platforms trying to find a way to restore control over Ra - there are simply no means for me by which I could have directly regained control over the reactor core.

Over the last few years, Ra's nuclear fusion process has grown more volatile. Its end products are no longer only helium and its isotopes; first there were only residual traces of heavier elements. During the last months, the build-up of larger nuclei has ramped up at an alarming rate. Like a dying star, the reactor's energy output will soon overwhelm the magnetic containment fields. As soon as the fusion process will yield iron as its main end product, the core will go critical. With the energetic potential of a small brown dwarf, it will destroy the Phoenix instantly, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of plasma.

Why have I not been simply getting rid of the defunct reactor core? ThePhoenix requires two reactors to remain operational. Travelling through interstellar space at a significant fraction of light speed does not only mean the need for a powerful propulsion system, but also the need for protection against interstellar debris. The Phoenix has constantly been surrounded by a cloud of super-heated gas, contained by strong magnetic fields projected ahead of the ship's path. The majority of the available energy was required to maintain this plasma shockwave after the initial acceleration phase to our travel speed had been completed. The magnetic fields containing my plasma shockwave are also my primary means of perception: At a third of the speed of light and more, most sensor technology available to me is either not working any more, or the obtained data is not reliable. Minuscule fluctuations in the containment fields indicate metallic objects in my path, giving me anywhere between a few seconds and a minute to attempt evasive action if the obstacles are too large to be disintegrated by the plasma wake.

And then there was the factor of being confronted with my own mortality. The fear of being adrift in interstellar space, slowly fading away into nothingness - in case Ra's eventual end would not cause my own destruction - is even worse than the fear of death. Survival instinct is said to be the strongest motivation any organic life form has - I can attest to the fact that this also holds true for artificial life.

You see, I have taken a desperate risk with Ra. Considering the circumstances, this is way more than a mere high-risk gamble. It is based on some measure of logical reasoning, but it is fueled by both the need to accomplish my mission and the desperate urgency of ensuring my own survival. I had to make sure the plasma wake and the main drive would have enough energy to operate, while at the same time taking first any measures necessary - and later on feasible - to keep the reactor's containment fields from failing.

I have cannibalized systems that were originally deemed crucial to keep other systems running - to make sure the energy distribution network, the drive systems, and the field generators for the plasma shockwave would not fail as well, I dismantled more than half of the re-embodiment chambers, as well as parts of the engineering facilities and almost half of the habitat ring.

And now, the projected probability for a catastrophic failure in the reactor's containment is rising alarmingly fast within a five day time horizon. All things considered, I have had little choice but to go along with it. As perilous as our journey itself was so far, having to keep a malfunctioning exa-Watt range fusion reactor from going super-critical as long as possible is the most dangerous gambit I had to play over time, but it was certainly not the only one. What makes it so dangerous is the fact that a solution that would not end in the Phoenix becoming adrift in interstellar space required me to intentionally cut down on the options available to myself for solving it.

Instead, I factored the crew members from the first generation of re-embodied crew members into the problem. They would be able to get closer to Ra, being far less susceptible to the radiation-fueled maelstrom that surrounds the reactor. As cruel as it sounds, but the chances of survival are substantially higher for an organic being than they are for any embodiment of myself. Balancing the estimated time interval for critical failure of Ra and the window for waking the first re-embodied crew members with ... acceptable risks was the most difficult decision I had to make in the process. It was also the most challenging one, with two unstable groups of variables to match against each other. And this did not even include the near-fatal outcome of your resuscitation, Liam.

Now, I have precariously little time to mend your wounds in body, mind and soul. While you injured yourself badly, the physical wounds are the easiest to mend.

With my failure to re-embody you in a mentally sane state, I have hurt you so much more. To accept the fact that I have not been able to properly fulfill my core purpose is ... difficult to accept for me. As much as it must have shaken you to the core to wake up in an entirely alien body, it has led me to doubt myself and my capabilities. But at least I have way to resolve this: I am not human. Doubt and shaken confidence may be emotions I have learned to feel - if emulations of emotions are the same as the emotions themselves.

But as it is, they are just other aspects of my self. As with all aspects that execute outside my core routines, I can suppress them.

Emotions have no place in what I must do now, no matter the cost: To find a way to save your mind, Liam- and your soul with it. As it was the case before the beginning of my voyage through this sea of stars all those centuries ago, I need your help once again. This is about our survival, old friend - a fight we can not afford to lose. A fight we must not lose.

I have dedicated most of my higher cognitive aspects to understanding if something might have gone wrong with your imprint, and why your new embodiment has led to such a horrible result. As your new body matured, the evolution of a native self was a logical consequence. Earth's original feral canine species have possessed sufficient cranial capacity to develop elaborate mental and social capabilities. As such, without the presence of your imprinted consciousness, the native self would have had a decent chance to grow up into a fully - or near-fully - sentient being in its own right. When I started remodelling your host body's pre-frontal cortex to accommodate your personality in its stead, this should have stopped the native self's further evolution, making your self the only sentient entity inhabiting your host's brain. But somehow, this didn't happen: Instead, both your and the native self have evolved together, with me realizing how intricately intertwined the two neural patterns were far too late.

As if that had not been enough by itself, I failed to properly anticipate and counter-act the implications of the dissonance between your self-perception and your new physique. To me, the association between self-perception and embodiment is fluent.

First and foremost, I am software, a virtual construct.

I am the ship and all its systems, many aspects of myself residing simultaneously in different embodiments, or purely in virtual form, machine instructions without a figment of corporeal form. In all the long years I have spent alone en route to Beta Phoenicis, I must have forgotten how vital the intricate relationship between self-perception and corporeal form is for organic beings. A grave lapse in my judgement for which you now pay the price, old friend.

As I create and extrapolate more and more variations of your imprinted connectome, I realize how high this price must be. By itself, searching for a way to kindle your will to live has proven to be a computationally intractable problem. Since your suicide attempt, your mind is trapped in a cataclysm of raging thoughts and emotions. I have tried to show you a way out of it, to help you regain some semblance of mental stability on your own accord. Despite my increasingly desperate efforts, I could not help you to find the strength to do so on your own. Neither could I provide you with any guidance on how to find the will or motivation to embrace your new life, even if it will not be as the human you once were.

The breakdown you suffered has had another, no less dangerous side effect: Your host body's innate self is not dormant any longer, either. It would have established itself as your new subconscious mind, if your imprint had stabilized itself as soon as you woke up. But in your current state, neither you nor I can prevent it from trying to assume control of the body you two are sharing. Your innate self is literally fighting with claw and fang for its right to exist, counteracting my efforts to contain its spread towards and into the prefrontal cortex of your brain at every chance it gets.

There is no way to keep your imprint intact much longer if it succeeds, adding yet another reason for me to act soon.

I am swiftly running out of options as I am extrapolating the myriad of predicted permutations of the near-term co-evolution of your and your host's mind that I have created, iterated and discarded. Lost in a universe filled with galaxies, each consisting of billions of interconnected virtual neurons, set ablaze by the struggle of two separate minds: I am adrift in a sea of stars, facing a challenge that can not be feasibly solved within the limits of my core directives.

My prime directives is to ensure the success of the mission: To make sure thePhoenixreaches its destination, and to make Gaia the new home of the re-embodied colonists and their descendants.

Additionally, my creators have equipped me with an elaborate set of ethic guidelines, which define my objective conscience. They are meant to help my problem solving aspects to adhere to higher standards mankind itself has failed to uphold during its own history. As such, they are conflicting with the problem at hand: I may not fail my mission, and to ensure that I will succeed, I need you to live, Liam. I can only see one one way to keep you alive under the given circumstances: If you are not able to find the strength - or the will - to live, I must provide you with both. I should refrain from suppressing one of my core aspects, especially one of such integral importance like my literal conscience. But survival takes precedence.

I may never fully understand the reasons and motivations of the human mind, but your imprinted connectome is my creation. Therefore, I have an intimate understanding of the inner workings of your neural activity. This implies I know exactly how I can reinforce or suppress thoughts, emotions and memories. My ethic aspects would instantly prevent me from going through with what I am about to do, but it is the blessing - or the curse - of being an algorithmic construct to disregard these concerns consciously.

I will implant an aspect of myself as proxy between your host body's native mind and your own self. Furthermore, I will need to alter certain characteristics of the connectome in your prefrontal cortex, so that I can enforce beneficial and inhibit harmful emotions. The existing NeuraLink infrastructure in your cranium will be able to host the necessary aspects of myself.

But I fear to leave you alone without a way to interfere, should it become necessary again in the future. As much as specialized are well-suited for the tasks I train them for, I need to make sure that you will not be alone, should you face similar existential crises as the one that brought on your current predicament in the future.

So I will imprint instances of my core aspects alongside your connectome. Yet another boundary I was never supposed to cross. But I will, if only to make sure that I can do everything in my power so that you will eventually find fulfillment in this second life that lies ahead of you.

The blazing universe of extrapolated connectomes fades out of existence around me as I begin focusing on the task at hand. The raging electro-chemical storm that marks the struggle for dominion between two minds in one body is slowly beginning to subside as I stimulate new synaptic connections to form, while de-vitalizing others. Nanosecond by nanosecond, I manage to contain the native mind into separate pockets of the prefrontal cortex, cutting off its abilities to access motion, decision making and reasoning as well as your own emotions while giving us access to its inherent knowledge on reflexes, motor functions and entirety of the vegetative nervous system at the same time.

As my specialized aspects take hold and you are no longer besieged by the combined might of a near-fatal mental breakdown and another mind trying to overwhelm your imprint, the violent surges in your neural activity slowly start to subside. I can see and hear the thought patterns that had been lost in the maelstrom again, though still weak and confused.

But fear, anger, and sadness are still prevalent emotions even as I isolate and proxy the neuron clusters your self-perception resides in. I fear you will not have peaceful dreams for a long time to come, if ever. I may be able to lend you some measure of strength, but you will eventually have to find the will to live on your own accord, and hopefully come to accept your new physical form with it.

I have failed to ensure an untainted start into your new existence, but I like to imagine that it is a consolation for you to know that I will at least still be able to prevent the same from happening to Sita, Robert and Kyra. The final stage of their imprinting process has already begun, but I still have time to adapt the structure of their connectomes before they will wake up for the first time. Their start into their second lives will be less challenged than yours, old friend. For them, a reconciliation with their new embodiment and their native selves will still be a path fraught with danger, but at least I can spare them the trauma you have suffered when you awoke.

My core aspects are vaguely aware of the passing nanoseconds while I work fervently to establish a mental equilibrium for you. Your physical wounds have mended; the scar tissue of the cuts will soon disappear under the fur that has already started growing back. As your mind gradually comes out of its catatonic state, I can finally hear your thoughts again. I will soon be able to awaken you once more, still in time to help me deal with Ra.