Chapter 244.5 (The Black Box)

Flowerpatch was working on multiple different pieces of material when Herod materialized in the hallway, requested admittance, and was allowed to walk through the door. Flowerpatch was using nanites again to hold her awareness, giving her a 'physical' body as she worked. There were dozens of workstations active, most of them doing analysis on material that covered a dizzying array of different materials used for different applications.

"Hey, Herod," she said, bending forward to look at the spectrometer.

"You wanted to see me?" Herod said politely, staying away from the various machines.

"You're the leading particle researcher," Flower said, straightening up. "You're familiar with warsteel, yes?"

"Yes," Herod said. "In all its paradoxical forms."

"All right, so, correct me if I'm wrong. Warsteel is an alloy formed of several noble elements, that when fully combined, act more like an atom than a molecule, correct?" Flower said, moving over to a large chunk of metal that was being drilled for a core sample.

"Right," Herod sighed.

"Once warsteel is set, the atoms are converted from standard valence bonding to antibonding, correct? Usually sigma-star bonding, right right?" Flowerpatch said, moving quickly over to another instrument and glancing inside.

"Right. It shouldn't work, but it does. It's one of those annoying things in particle physics," Herod stated. "We know why it works, but it shouldn't."

"Correct. It's one of the strange things, usually referred to as strange matter and strange particles," Herod looked around for somewhere to sit.

"Oh, sorry," Flower said. She waved her hand and a chair appeared against one wall. "That should be outside of any magnetic interference."

"Thanks," Herod sat down and noticed his headache eased up. "The magnetic spectrum leakage is why you use nanite hosting so much?" he asked.

Flowerpatch nodded. "It keeps any leakage either way from affecting my test results."

There was silence for a moment before Herod spoke again. "Why the interest in warsteel? It's pretty much been examined to death."

Flower shook her head. "Sure, sure, with the tech we have nowadays and the knowledge that it works and how it works. With heat and kinetic energy both warsteel can act as a superconductor, which is why it takes hypervelocity rounds to even mar it, the transfer of kinetic energy has to be so fast and immediate that the warsteel can't spread the kinetic energy across itself so that the entire structure has the same kinetic energy total across the total," Flower said. "Like superconductor tries to have the same electric and heat charge across the entire structure."

Herod just sat silently. She was more talking to herself than him.

"So, the Ancients, they create warsteel. Of course they did, our parents love kinetic weaponry where every other species abandons it as soon as possible to switch to energy weapons due to ammunition consumption issues," Flowerpatch said, moving over to another instrument. "However, our parents have always had a problem that most races view as insurmountable but they view as there has to be a way around. Well, two problems actually. Power storage and heat. Heat was the big one, from industry to just plain jogging down the road, thermal issues are part of being a human."

She moved over to the core sampler, removing the core and laying it down next to a dozen other core samples.

"So, that's why armor is so different across military applications compared to nowadays," she tossed up the eVR representation of the structure of the core samples, complete with labels. Herod noted that it was all military grade armor from the Republic, then the Combine, the the Imperium, then the Fourth Republic, then the Second Federation, then the Confederacy.

"Look, the layering is remarkably different during the times," Flowerpatch said. She turned and her image blurred as she shivered with excitement. "We need to know not only what materials, what alloys, hyper-elements, and material knowledge they had, but how they applied it."

Herod nodded. "All right. You needed to see me?"

She pointed at a section of armor. "For the most part, all that survived of materials that we can access is old military surplus. I have some scans and samples of military construction, mainly fortresses, orbital systems, and the like, but most, if not all, of the civilian technology was replaced over the last eight thousand years."

She turned and pointed at an image of a full conversion cyborg heavy combat chassis. "That's a Combine Era cyborg, now, as our resident particle physicist, why does he have the laminate in the skull that has approximately five times the thickness in the warsteel bands of the laminate?"

"That's an interesting question," Herod said, getting up. He walked over to the cyborg, pulling apart the eVR skull and examining it. "You're sure about these measurements and the data?"

"Positive. He's in storage if you want to take a look at the actual physical war frame," Flower said. "I don't, he gives me the creeps," she turned and tossed up another hologram. "This is a full conversion 'warborg' in use by the Confederacy. This Marine died rescuing a podling during the First Telkan War, got his braincase cracked fighting against Type-Two Precursors, the ones built by the Mantid, not the Lanaktallan like the Type-One."

"Hmm, cracked brain case in the newer one. Both of them carry the braincase in the chest, but the armor is thicker in the older version. You're right, they used more warsteel for less protection. Modern laminates are more effective, stronger and lighter," Herod said, looking over it.

"From a particle physicist point of view, why go with that in the cyborg chassis and not this," she pointed at a vehicle armor laminate from the same time-frame. "Virtually identical to the modern warborg, used in light air mobile power armor and vehicles. Why the heavier armor, with more warsteel, when it has less effectiveness?"

Herod walked around it, looking at it from dozens of points of view. "What killed our older specimen?"

Flowerpatch consulted a digital note. "Neural degradation. Senility basically."

Herod shook his head. "That should have been accounted for. Bring up the medical records and call in Torturer."

"Ugh, he gives me the creeps, like he's trying to get a peek at my core source coding," Flowerpatch said, but she reached out and toggled a panel that suddenly appeared.

"Tee here," the deadpan DS said.

"Hey, it's Flowerpatch, can you come in and look at something?" she said.

"On my way." The communication just ended.

Herod looked at the medical records. Killed in Action, extensive neural damage.

"You notice he doesn't have a SUDS?" Herod said.

"Most Terrans didn't back then," Flowerpatch said, shrugging.

"That's not true. That's patently false based on the data we have right here," Herod said.

Flower brought up a bunch of scans and checked them. "Combine military forces and Imperium military forces didn't have SUDS."

Torturer knocked and Flower let him in.

"All right, why didn't they have SUDS but now we do?" Herod said.

Torturer shook his head as he walked over to the medical data. "Because the SUDS system was damaged from the Screaming Ones."

"OK, it says neural degradation was the cause of death, but Herod says it should have been accounted for, and the records say Killed In Action," Flower said.

"Hmm, there's a lot of damage to his brain. Microstrokes, dendrite and neuron damage, axon snapping, hmm," Torturer stared at it. "I haven't seen damage like this before."

"The casing's warsteel looks weird. Almost..." Herod said, leaning in to get a closer look. "Cracked, pitted, I can see flaking. The battlesteel and plasteel laminate sections are unharmed, but warsteel layers inside the laminate are pitted and cracked."

Flower nodded. "See, that's what I don't get. What could have done that?"

The voice startled all three of them.

"Mantid Speaker and Warrior psychic attacks. He was killed by a thrust with a psychic bladearm. The physical bladearm was stopped by his armor, but the psychic energy pierced the brain casing armor and in effect, stabbed him right through the brain," Victor's voice was solemn. "He probably had a dozen warriors on him in addition to the Speaker."

All three of them turned around, staring.

"Warsteel is a psychically active material. It provides protection against psychic attacks," Victor said, wandering around the lab, staring at the work going on, still speaking. "You're wondering about why the armor around the braincase is more heavily armored than modern warborgs. It's because the Mantid made extensive use of psychic weaponry."

Flower nodded. "All right. That's heavily recorded."

"You're trying to figure out the logic and reasoning behind the usage of materials for the time. A commendable action," Victor said, reaching out and touching his fingers on a piece of Combine armor that had come off a vehicle. "And lets you know what material sciences and engineering methods they had access to at the time."

Flower nodded again, smiling. "Yes. If I can understand why they chose to use the materials they used then possibly I can determine what engineering methods they applied to the SUDS system."

"Are we going to be able to examine the SUDS artifacts soon?" Herod asked.

Legion stopped. "You can access them at any time. There's a list. What did you need?"

"Just the standard SUDS to neural tissue interface," Herod said. "We should be able to reverse engineer the entire system just from that."

Victor gave a short bark of a laugh. "Ah, yes, the whole 'we have a tire so we can reverse engineer the entire jet aircraft' attitude," he shook his head. "A favorite of time travel fiction, where a simple dropped comlink changes the outcome of the war and now our protagonist must travel back in time again to stop the evil culture from reverse engineering technology hundreds of years more advanced."

Torturer frowned. "The SUDS interface is basically the SUDS system," he said.

"Hmm, it appears we're going to need another family meeting," Victor mused, heading toward the exit. "Return to your labs, put your experiments in a state that needs no supervision. We'll be meeting in the artifact materials section."

Herod frowned as he watched Victor leave.

"Does he annoy anyone else as much as he annoys me?" Herod asked.

Torturer shook his head. "He scares the hashes out of me. I hate looking him in the eyes, it's like looking into eternity and seeing someone staring back only to be found wanting."

"I like him," Flowerpatch said.

"You would," Herod grumped.

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The "Artifact Materials Section" contained many different things. Combine and Imperium Era military equipment and stasis locked corpses, pre-Glassing tech, including a pair of old satellites that had been flung from Terra orbit only to be recaptured and brought to the Black Box, but most of all, SUDS equipment. User interfaces, a pair of repeaters, and a neural template application system. It ranged from thousands of years old to cutting edge.

Victor stood next to a large warsteel block that had the side open, revealing ancient computer equipment that whirred and chuckled to itself.

"All right, let's nip this stupidity right in the bud," he said. He looked at the gathered Digital Sentiences. "How many of you think that figuring out the SUDS is as easy as using this stuff to reverse engineer it all?"

All the hands went up.

"All right. What is this and how is it applicable?" he said, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a glass tube with a metal base. The base had a dozen blunt metal spikes coming out the bottom. Inside the glass were wires and resistance loops. He tossed it into a null-G field and let it bobble there.

"Well, what is it?" Victor asked.

The whole team moved around it, examining it.

"It is damaged. It's no longer functional," Victor said. "You have no idea what it is, just that it was plugged into a board of cellulose that had some of these in it," he tossed another handful of objects into the field. Cylinders, with different color stripes on them, with a wire on each end. "Here's the other objects. The item was nonfunctional when your lab received it because some genius decided to rip it apart." More items were tossed in, including a small piece of quartz crystal.

After looking at it for a long moment, Darius-38742 shook his head. "Wait, it can't be..."

"What?" Herod asked, turning from where he was examining the ceramic doped with cadium cylinder.

"It's electronics. Primitive bare bones electronics," Darius said. He pointed at the glass tube. "That's what used to be called a vacuum tube, a primitive transistor! Holy crap, the only reason I know about this is because one was found in a LossGlass dig two years ago."

"Correct. It's a radio. A low frequency wide band amplitude modulation radio receiver that could be basically made by anyone in a wooden shed at the time the SUDS project went from theory to proof to application," Victor said. "Gen-Zero electronics, circuitry done with copper wire."

"Why show us this?" Herod asked.

"Because we aren't trying to reverse engineer alien tech two or three generations ahead of us, we're trying to reverse engineer tech from twelve generations ago, that was probably a sideways offshoot to begin with, from the same kinds of minds that took that," he pointed at the crude electronic devices, "And made it to Terra orbit with it. That went to Luna with it or just the next generation of extremely crude semi-conductors. That built nuclear reactors based on that tech right there."

Flower suddenly sat up. "Which means we can't look at what the best tech was to make something, we have to look at the bare minimum tech to accomplish it! Because they would have to invent the technology to make the SUDS work, not take existing tech across the board! Sure, they could use existing quantum computer technology, to an extent, and existing materials and engineering, but they'd have to apply it completely different and come up with what they needed to fill the gaps!"

"Correct," Victor said.

"That still doesn't answer the question," Vanishing Point said. "Why aren't we pulling apart the SUDS equipment we have to reverse engineer it?"

Victor sighed. "Who here is our computer technician?" he asked, already pointing at Steven Delta-32711. "Steven, are dumb terminals still in use?"

"Call me Delta, but, yes, they're still in use. Especially in warships, classified areas. We're using a lot of them right here," Steven Delta answered.

"What about limited application consoles, still in use?" Victor asked.

"Yes. Most of what people call computers that attached to the quantum or axoim systems are actually limited application consoles," Delta said.

Victor pointed at the small pieces of technology. "Those are intracranial SUDS recording and uplink systems, put in the human skull to make backups of the SUDS data at a specified time, usually every seventy-two hours, or at termination and or critical life signs," Victor pointed back at Delta. "It's a one way dumb terminal that only provides output."

"But we have the SUDS neural template applicator right there, so we have both sides of the system," Vanish protested.

Victor waved his hand, creating a box reading "Human Brain" that had a line going to a small box reading "Intracranial Interface" that had a line leading to a big box marked "????" then another line leading to a box marked "Applicator" that had a line leading to the "Human Brain" again.

"Oh, yeah, the repeater," Victor said. He tossed a box marked "Repeater - Incoming" and "Repeater - Outgoing" up.

"There, now, what's in the box?" Victor asked, pointing at the box with ??? on it. "Because it is true, you can take the signal from the output, figure out how to recompile it into the dataform used by the input, and skip our mystery box, but all you've done is prove you can move a person from one body to the next."

Herod suddenly got it. "There's something we're missing. Something that mystery box does aside from decoding and recompiling the data."

Victor nodded. "Every planet or starship that can apply SUDS has a repeater. I could take that repeater right there, turn it on, let it synch up, and we could do SUDS transfers right here. But all the repeater does it take the output and stream it to the mystery components and take the input streamed from the mystery components."

"Have they tried triangulating the datastreams? See where the myster components are?" Vanish asked.

"Funny you of all of us would ask that question," Victor chuckled. "No. See, the signal vanishes and there's no detectable incoming signal. The only reason we know this is a repeater is because there's no communication between the incoming and outgoing signal hardware."

"So we don't know where it goes and we don't know where it comes from and we don't know what it is," Flower sighed.

"Oh, it gets worse. See, this system has a ton of side bandwidth that isn't used by the system but is generatred by it. So, they created SolNet to use that bandwidth, and even with our current bandwidth needs we use less than thirty percent of the generated bandwidth," Victor said, shrugging. "Then you top it off with the billions of rogue signals, the Sleeping Ones, the Screaming Ones that remain, and you've got an entire 'what the hell is this thing' going on. See, it isn't good enough to just recreate the signal processing, you need to recreate the entire system for it to be of any use."

Flower nodded, 'chewing' on a 'lock' of her hair. "Wasn't it originally SoulNet?"

"YEs, up until the Great Glassing. The SoulNet system is still part of it, but it's firewalled off from SUDS because it's full of the Screaming Ones and the Sleeping Ones," Victor said. "It had to be repaired."

Everyone frowned.

"Who repaired it? Can't we ask them?" Torturer asked.

Victor shook his head. "No. They're dead. Plus, it wouldn't matter. I was there when it was repaired and I don't even understand how it was done."

"What do you mean?" Vanish asked.

Victor sighed. "It wasn't repaired. Well, it was, but that's not what was done by the person who did it."

"What was done?" Herod asked.

Victor stopped stroking his beard, sighing deeply, the sound full of regret and loss.

"The Digital Omnimessiah healed it. He touched the forehead of a screaming little girl who had been born into being a Screaming One and healed her, healed the whole system, with just the touch of his hand," he said.

"It was the Second Miracle."