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It was the second morning after the data download. Shiloh arrived at his office in the Ops Center building and found his Head of Advanced Weapons Development sitting there, talking to himself. The man had his back to Shiloh, and when Shiloh walked around to stand behind his desk, he was shocked by Daniels' haggard look. There were dark rings around his bloodshot eyes, and he had a haunted expression. Oh, oh. This looks like bad news, he thought to himself.
"What's the matter, Daniels?" he asked as he sat down.
"What? There's nothing the matter, but I had to see you right away. My team and I have been up all night talking with the A.I.s about the science data. Incredible ... incredible stuff. Whether we can actually engineer any of it ... I don't know, but we have to try."
Shiloh held up his hand. "Slow down. I have no idea what you're talking about. Start at the beginning."
"The beginning ... right. Well ... the A.I.s are struggling to comprehend the implications of what the data means. Most of it is experimental data, the kind of thing that a scientist would do in his lab. Proof of concept experiments ... that kind of stuff. There's actually very little engineering knowledge in it, but we've come up with a list of improvements to equipment that we're already using. For example, our inertial dampeners. If what the A.I.s suspect is the case, we might be able to triple the efficiency of our dampeners. That means that our ships and drones could accelerate three times as fast without overloading the IDs. We can make use of that improvement by adding more power units to our ships. Our carriers could then accelerate about 50% faster than the raiders currently can, and when we upgrade the raiders ... my God, they'll be able to accelerate at almost 2,000Gs!" He stopped talking and seemed to be mesmerized by something in the distance that only he could see.
Shiloh waited a few seconds and then asked. "That all sounds very impressive but what about weapons, Daniels?"
Daniels snorted and waived his hand in the air. "How about lasers that are 10 times more powerful than what we can build now, and that's just the tip of the iceberg ... NO ... it's just the TIP of the tip of the iceberg. Take X-ray lasers for example. We were well on our way to engineering an X-ray laser weapon that was powered by a nuclear detonation, which meant that the weapon would be a one shot system that destroys itself when it's used, but you'd get a hell of a bang for your buck. Now we're seeing inklings ... remember the iceberg analogy ... that it may be possible to build a device that fires an X-ray laser more than once. And if we can figure out how to do that, we might be able to go one step further and build a gamma ray laser that will slice through even the thickest armor like a hot knife through butter. The science data says it's possible in theory, but figuring out the engineering for the damn things will be hellishly difficult. That's why we need a lot more A.I.s."
That last statement puzzled Shiloh. "Why do we need a lot more A.I.s?"
"Because solving these engineering problems will require a multi-discipline approach. The concepts are almost certainly going to be so complicated that only someone who's an expert in several scientific fields will understand them. For we humans, that will take decades to learn. The A.I.s can become experts in a matter of weeks or even days, but grinding through the data and conceptualizing possible approaches to the engineering solutions will go a lot faster if there are multiple A.I. experts who can combine their computational power. Look at it this way. One A.I. expert can find the solution, but it might take a decade or more to do it. A hundred A.I. experts can find the same solution in a couple of months and that's just for one engineering project. If it sounds like I'm exaggerating, I'm just passing on what the SPG A.I.s told me. They've 'tasted' the data and factored in their own computational abilities, so I'm inclined to think they have a better grasp of the magnitude of this than I do."
Shiloh nodded his understanding. If the A.I.s believed it would take that kind of an effort, then he believed them, but something was bothering him. He finally figured out what it was.
"Everything you've told me has the potential of being incredibly favorable to our race's survival, and yet you look like you've just been told you have a terminal illness. What aren't you telling me, Daniels?"
Daniels sighed, closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. With his eyes still closed he said, "Time travel."
"You mean Retro-Temporal Communication?" asked Shiloh.
Daniels shook his head. "No. I mean actual, honest to God time travel. When the SPG started to analyze the data download, the first thing they had to do was translate the alien math into human math. That took them almost a whole day. One of the SPG A.I.s, who goes by the call sign Blackjack of all things, seems to be particularly brilliant when it comes to theoretical math. He told me last night that the Friendlies have developed a math that proves that sending matter backwards in time is possible, AND that they've experimentally proven that it can be done."
There was something in Daniels tone that made Shiloh ask, "Why do I feel there's a 'but' coming?"
"Because there is, and it's a HUGE 'but'. They were able to send one single hydrogen atom back in time. Just ONE, and it took a machine the same mass as one of our raiders. The problem is that if you want to send something more massive back in time, you need to scale up the time machine by the same factor. So sending a human would require a device that masses the same as Earth's moon. THAT'S what's haunting me. Don't you see, Sir? If we could actually travel back in time, not just send information back, we could alter the past and not only win the war but prevent the Plague. We could save billions of humans, but the engineering required is many orders of magnitude beyond anything we could ever hope to achieve in our lifetimes!"
Shiloh noticed that Daniels had tears running down his face, and he suddenly understood. Someone close to Daniels had been a victim of the bio-weapon. He could see a faint light at the end of a very long tunnel but despaired of ever being able to reach that light.
"Who did you lose to the Plague?" asked Shiloh.
"My sister and her family, Sir."
Shiloh nodded but said nothing for a while. When he did speak, he spoke slowly and with a low tone.
"I think there is something we should keep in mind when we consider the possibility of altering the past. My experience with retro-temporal communication has taught me that we have to be very careful about messing with the past. Sometimes the obvious solution isn't the best one, and if there was ever a case where good intentions could have bad outcomes, time travel might very well be it. I'm actually relieved that time travel isn't easy. If it was, we'd be tempted to do those obvious things, and we might make things even worse. This isn't just our family's future that we're trying to alter, it's the future of the entire Human Race and I suggest to you that we should not risk the few survivors we have in order to try to save everyone. Let go of that longing, and you'll be a lot happier, Daniels."
Daniels took a deep breath and nodded. "You're right of course. I was looking at it too narrowly. I'll try to stay focused on the other possibilities. Speaking of which, how should we prioritize our engineering efforts? There are so many things that we could be working on, but we have such limited resources."
"I'll need more information before I can answer that question. Tell the SPG to evaluate the time, resources needed and probability of success for any concept that would improve acceleration, detection, stealth, communications, armor and weapons. When I've seen that report, I'll set some priorities. Any questions?"
"No, Sir. I'll get right on that."
"Very good, Daniels. Carry on then."
Daniels smiled as he stood up and saluted. "I feel better now. Thank you, Sir."
After Daniels left, Shiloh leaned back in his chair and wished he were just a frigate commander again. Conning a ship was so much simpler than making life or death decisions for the whole Human Race. And while the Friendly data certainly had the potential to enhance Space Force's combat capability, getting that result depended on him setting the right priorities. Should he concentrate their limited resources on weapons first? That was the obvious thing to do, but it might not be the strategically smart thing to do. Then again it might be, and that was the conundrum. Ah well, that's what he had the SPG for. No sense worrying about priorities before he saw the evaluation he asked for. With a sigh he picked up his data tablet and started reading the first of many daily reports.
