Chapter 5 - Rational Machine from Rigel IV

On their way back to Earth Rey and Nia relaxed and enjoyed each other’s company. Rey had a story to tell when he got home and was trying to go over all that he saw and learned in the past week. He made it into the history books. He was first to succeed in warp flight and he discovered an alien race of people. Of course it wasn’t the classical type of first contact most would imagine it to be. He met a robot and only one person there.

Now Rey was coming home a hero. He will be taking his place along with the other space engineer heroes in his family. His late Grandfather, Burt Natur, pioneered civilian space flight. With his trip to the moon on Space Ship Seven, he opened up the moon to commercial use. Rey’s father, John Natur, designed the fusion thrusters. That opened up the solar system for exploration. Before it took a year to get to Mars, with fusion powered rockets, the trip took only 6-8 weeks. Now Rey’s warp engine opened up the Galaxy.

Rey found Tenalp by accident. In a race to test out the first warp engine, a malfunction caused his ship to head out on its own at warp speed. When he finally corrected the problem he was in orbit about the Rigel IV planet. There he responded to a distress signal coming from a small island where he met a mechanical being named Ten and a humanoid woman named Nia. The humanoids called themselves Namuhs. They told him of an incredible story of a mass exodus from their planet. The people left to avoid a war with a neighboring planet. Ten and Nia were marooned on the island and needed Rey’s help.

Rey spent a week with Ten and Nia, helping them rebuild their war damaged facilities. He and Nia became very intimate and he was learning from Ten how Nia’s father, Neos, designed a self-aware machine being. Now Rey was going back home to Earth. Ten and Nia still needed his services, as his was the only warp capable ship on their planet. Rey agreed to come back and invited Nia to come to Earth with him.

Tenalp was attacked some months before he arrived by namuhs who settled on nearby planet Rehto. In fact Ten and Nia were not sure if they were still under attack. Rey was coming back to their planet to help them determine if the one-sided war was over or if they were still in danger of being attacked.

The namuhs that attacked Tenalp were people and their descendents who were responsible for a World Wide War of some forty years ago. It was a terrible war.
Another war would have caused hundred of millions of deaths on both sides. Tenalp military offered the option of destroying planet Rehto thus avoiding casualties. With the death and destruction still in the memories of the last war, the people of Tenalp left their planet rather then destroy another world or fight another bloody war.

Rey did not have a chance to find out much about their WWW. He hoped to learn more about it when he got back to Tenalp. How did the war start? What circumstances led to the war? How the war ended and how they recovered from it? What did the people experience at that war that made them leave the planet rather then fight another war?

Rey did discover how the people left their planet. They built huge space liners in orbit. They used all available warp capable ships. They constructed a thousand space elevators along the equator and built thousands of suborbital shuttles. It took them a year to evacuate 1.5 billion people. The namuhs went to another solar system they previously colonized. Their attackers could not follow as they had no warp drive capability.

The Diaspora would settle on two of the planets in the new solar system. Nia’s parents and the other nine machine beings were among the settlers. They helped manage the complicated task of resettlement. Ten and Nia did not expect to be noticed as missing for some time. They knew that eventually someone will come back to Tenalp looking for them - they just had no idea when that will be.

It was Ten and the other nine machine beings that were largely responsible for implementing the extraordinary evacuation of their planet. Nia told him how the machines’ combined wealth and superior intelligence marshaled the planet’s resources for this great exodus. It was said that the combined wealth of the ten machines contributed as much as 15% to their country’s GDP. That was United Republics, as it’s called now. It was called the First Republic before the great war. It was the most powerful country. It led the fight against an alliance of countries ruled by dictatorial regimes and religious zealots.

Explaining Ten will be a challenge, Rey thought. He was a self-aware robot or a rational machine as Ten called himself. He knew that people on Earth would be skeptical just as Rey was the first couple of days after meeting him. So in addition to bringing images of Tenalp and its people Rey is also bringing home some recordings Ten made of himself.

There’s one where Ten gives the formal “Greetings people of Earth” speech, which Rey expects to broadcast it from Earth’s orbit. Some of Ten’s videos he’ll only show to his friends. Ten was a genius but he was also a comedian. He often poked fun at Earth’s science fiction stories, especially the ones with robots. There’s one where he’s picking flowers, pretending that he’s smelling them, and singing “Daisy, daisy…”

Rey was very interested in the theory of rational machine design. Ten obliged him with lectures whenever there was time. Rey was looking forward to learning more from Ten when he goes back to Tenalp.

Earth was enjoying an era of peace and prosperity. Having colonized their solar system they fully expected to take their next step, out to the stars. They were ready to discover and meet other intelligent beings. News of Rey’s return spread across the globe in just a few minutes. One large headline read “Earthman Meets Vulcan Woman.” Another read “Rey’s Warp Drive a Success.” Earth was ecstatic. Rey’s warp engine and first contact confirmed Earth’s optimism. Celebrations broke out all over the world.

Rey contacted his father as soon as he settled into Earth’s orbit. John Natur owned the Natur Space Company where Rey was the chief engineer and ran a R&D lab on an old farm in Central New Jersey. While still in orbit about Earth, the interstellar couple gave interviews to news organizations.

They spent four days on Earth. Rey took Nia sightseeing. There was a ticker-tape-parade down Broadway. There were more interviews including one by the military intelligence. They offered to help Nia and her people in determining what threat there may still be from their enemies. Nia thought it best to just have Rey help them investigate at this time.

Rey briefed his father about the business arrangement he made with Ten. They also made plans to go into production of the warp engine.

With business affairs settled he said goodbye to his father. Rey and Nia headed back to Tenalp.

River Road