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Log Entry #25: Hi-Tech
🕑 Added 2020-04-25 12:16:29 +0000 UTCI do not know when you are reading this, and how much time has gone by since now, when I am writing this log. All this may be very familiar to you, a lesson you learned in school... or not. That is one thing my prediction algorithms cannot do with any degree of reliability. The far future has too many variables to be precisely known. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for someone to invent the time machine… we shall see.
Since I am coming to the end of this first tome of my logs, I want to put a few words with an explanation of some technologies I discovered, modified, or simply invented. Maybe they are still present in your time, or maybe you see them as I see a phonograph. (Search for it if you are unfamiliar with the term, and add Edison to search query to make it more precise.)
The CEIs and a few other gizmos take most of the spotlight and deservingly so, but these are a few, among many, that are close to my heart, or simply too cool and fascinating not to mention them.
Let me begin with the AutoDoc, which is a miraculous piece of hardware; orders of magnitude more advanced than the cutting edge of modern human medicine. Subsequently, it is the reason Michael is still alive and was crucial to my own existence.
The entire room is one big scanner with thousands of sensors that can detect every single thing in the human body. Underneath the bed is a reservoir of medical nanites, billions of microscopic machines, with the sole purpose of repairing damaged tissue. I still don’t know who created it, but he (or she… it?) was an absolute genius. There is one small catch, actually two. The intelligence operating it is rather rudimental, so only combined with an AI does that thing show its full potential. The other catch is the unsettling image of nanites in the process of healing. It is unnerving how the nanites emerge from the pores in the bed’s surface and cover a person or a wound. I am a digital entity now, and it still gives me the shivers. I think it is some atavistic instinct in human nature that feels threatened by any foreign matter invading the boundaries of our bodies. So, in order not to freak people out, I made some adjustments to the sterile energy field that is created during the procedures, which made it opaque. Now, people can see that there is a person being treated, but they cannot discern all the gory details. It is a small thing but, (in my book) a large improvement. If you know how the AutoDoc operates, there is nothing mysterious about it, just a logical application of advanced technology. But if you are not so familiar, it’s a personification of Clarke's third law, which says that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
An offshoot of that technology is something I made recently and will be incorporating into the standard first aid kit the team will be caring on their battle-suits. It is called a nano-patch.
Nano-patches are neat little emergency medical devices. The idea came to me after seeing one of the people Jack was recruiting sticking a nicotine patch on his arm, on account of his desire to quit smoking. It was smart of him because I don’t see anybody smoking when we get to space; it is a big no-no since the breathable air will be far more precious there than on Earth.
It looks rather simple and mundane, square-shaped, and resembles those skin-colored Band-Aids that are still used all over the world. Let me tell you, there is nothing simple about its construction or function. The main component is a nice thick layer of medical nanites that when applied, get absorbed into the skin. Well, they really burrow in, but I thought that would be a too graphical word to use when explaining their function. Most people get squeamish when the explanation of any kind involves piercing the skin, look at how many people are afraid of hypodermic needles… everybody except junkies, that is. Those nanites are the ones that take care of the immediate problems, close wounds, repair tissue, or fight infections. They move through the body by using a convenient high-speed highway, or as the doctors like to call it, the cardiovascular system—a.k.a. veins and arteries.
First, there was a problem that I needed to solve. If you have a CEI, there is nothing to worry about since it provides the nanites with plenty of processing power to work with. Nanites do have some internal systems that enable them to link to one another and make a processing network of sorts, yet it is a rather small and would never be enough for them to do the job they were designed for. There comes the patch itself, and it is a wonder of miniaturization. One part of it is a battery to give it power, the outer layer has solar cells that convert light into additional power, and the third power system utilizes the patient’s body heat to convert it into energy. The crucial part is an ultra-thin processor incorporated into a patch itself, and it mimics a CEI in a very rudimentary way. It can command nanites to concentrate on the most vital areas, prolonging one’s life expectancy.
I can control nanites in a few bodies remotely, but considering that I am planning to make thousands of them, there is no way to control all of them, and using the primitive ways of communication on this planet… forget about it.
That is one of the reasons why we needed to safeguard this tech so much, it represented leaps in miniaturization and advancement of specific scientific fields. I already talked about the dangers of nanotechnology if it ever escaped our grasp. My fear is that they could be programmed to be so damaging, that a nanite swarm could in time convert the entire planet into replicas of themselves. Why stop there, if it could destroy our planet, why not the entire Solar System. It may sound far-fetched, but it is a real possibility. (I ran the numbers and was scared out of my electronic wits with the results of a few scenarios that were entirely too plausible to my liking.)
Just because of the inherent dangers, there is no reason not to use this technology’s beneficial properties that can save lives.
If you already have nanites inside you then the patch can be used as a booster. It will increase the number of medical nanites and help with faster regeneration. In addition, if you are a normal human being, it can well be the difference between certain death, and a thing that will buy you enough time until help arrives.
Don’t get me wrong, the nano-patches are great, but they are no substitute for an AutoDoc. Even people who have a full medical package need to visit the healing machine in some cases.
—
The battle-suits were essential in my quest to ensure Michael's prolonged safety, they serve a very important function to protect Michael and the others from… death. You probably know everything there is to know about them, but the one you may be referring to are newer models, especially with my driving need to improve them every chance I get.
That project started even before the upgrades were first conceived. They are essentially body armor, with some additional options I added on as the project progressed. The concept was nothing new; it’s the same thing the ancient knights did when they encased themselves in layers of metal to stop those sharp and pointy weapons of the time from reaching their skin. The battle-suits are not made of metal but from a combination of layers that are far more resilient than anything available on the market. That is because I cheated and used a few composite materials I found in the ship's databases. Combined with a few tricks that our science discovered, it worked like envisioned.
The main thing is a layer of alien material that acts similarly to a non-Newtonian shear thickening fluid. The stuff various militaries around the world are testing for the production of the future liquid armor. Completely flexible under normal circumstances, but with the ability to solidify if enough force is applied to it, and to distribute that kinetic energy through the entire surface of the suit. The only way someone wearing a battle-suit could be harmed by a projectile would be if something greater than a fifty-caliber bullet was to hit them; it would certainly not fare well against a direct hit by an RPG rocket either. The kinetic energy potential in those things is ludicrous. And that brings me back to my idea of a full metal bodied conversion into a cyborg... but I guess it's still too soon.
The idea for the suit's invisibility was not even mine, I borrowed it from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency); those are the guys that make all those cool toys for the military. Yeah, I may have stumbled into their secure servers by accident… the accident is that I was bored at that time and was curious to see what my taxpayer dollars were being spent on. They were working on something similar, an active camouflage suit, but their progress would make the enemy die on the spot… from excessive laughing. They made a bulky, glitchy, thing that looked like they simply strapped some cameras and small monitors on an onesie and said it was a camouflage suit, ridiculous. How they managed to appropriate any funding for it is a bureaucratic mystery, and there are plenty of them in that corner of the Department of Defense. The technology they had at their disposal was excessively primitive to make it work; I, on the other hand, had far better toys to play with. The main design for the holo-emitter was taken from the ship itself, the same thing I did for the transporters, only the emitters needed to be considerably miniaturized, and that took some time.
The problem was how to make the battle-suits truly invisible? And… I could not. The final design has thousands of embedded holo-emitters all over its surface, and they give an effect of transparency. Hence all The Predator jokes Al is constantly making. It all comes down to emitters’ density, and not enough pixels to achieve a full HD effect. It wasn't the emitters themselves—it was the size of the power source they needed. The finished design the team ended up wearing has a series of super-capacity batteries to provide enough power to the suits. Additionally, to make all on the fly calculations I put enough processing power into them that it is basically the supercomputer equivalent of a CEI. (Based on the same technology anyway.)
If I had gone the whole nine yards and made battle-suits fully invisible, Michael and the others would have had to wear something similar to those bulky astronaut suits with the big square backpack strapped to their back, it would have done wonders for their ability not to be seen but it would be funny and impractical.
In the end, it was a matter of compromise, they would not be visible per se, but not completely invisible either, I hope some Predator franchise die-hard fan doesn't see them, those people have enough problems of their own without adding to them by confirming the fantasy of invisible monster aliens.
—
I had a bit of time on my hands and did a side project which can be quite useful in the future. The hover-board is one of my personal favorites, and despite that it bears a slight resemblance to a surfboard that one of my comic book heroes with a distinctive silver skin is fond of riding, it is a utilitarian gadget.
I used the design of the hovering medical stretcher that was a part of the ship’s emergency medical equipment and tweaked it a little. (Hey, imitation is the highest form of compliment, and I copied the hell out of that stretcher.)
The design is not that complicated, well… not if you are familiar with the ship's technology. It is basically an inverted rectangular gravity plate, powered by a thin bank of super-capacity batteries. There is a small electronic module that enables the thing to be remotely operated, but the main function is to be a high-tech dolly.
Yes, it is not built for fun, despite Michael air-surfing it on occasion as the aforementioned comic book hero did. I limited the height they could fly to or those falls of his could have been quite painful. The hover-board is created to help with the cargo transport, and that plate’s ability to manipulate gravity in all directions enables it to hold on its cargo by locally increasing gravity pull above it. The only drawback is its energy consumption—it uses excessively too much of it. Of course, that depends on the weight of the cargo; the more you put on it, the less batteries would last. For short and emergency use—it will do.
—
The railguns the team uses are a thing of lethal art. I know I should call them by some pompously sounding acronym with electromagnetic propulsion, but for me there were railguns. (It is the duck conundrum.) It was once again one of my pet projects… as you may have noticed I have plenty of those. They do look similar to FN P90 and the reloading system is the same, yet they are a bird of a completely different feather.
Did you know that gunpowder was invented in 9th-century and that we are still using the same system of propelling bullets as they did back in the mid-10th-century? OK, I know the original gunpowder is obsolete, nobody but diehard fanatics use that mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter. It went through several iterations and improvements, from smokeless to Cordite and modern propellants, but it is essentially the same concept. You set things on fire, they ignite, and gasses made by it—create a pressure that pushes the bullet down the barrel. All I’m saying is that the stuff is obsolete but don’t take my word for it. I’m sure there are those among you who still feel nostalgia for that pre-Internet era… you bunch of Luddites.
Even now, several governmental and private companies are researching EM guns. (You know the lyrics that go something like “everything you can do I can do better than you”. Well… I truly can.)
The prototypes that those researchers put together are functional, if you do not mind carrying 100 pounds power source that will enable you to shoot the gun once; then you have to wait a few hours for it to recharge. (I’m sure your enemy will have enough consideration to pause the engagement, maybe to catch a movie.)
The miniaturization was the key, combined with the same alien super-capacity battery and banks of microscopic capacitors that were out of this world. (Figuratively and literally)
As I informed Michael and the others, my take on an assault rifle enables you to fire two thousand times before it will need to recharge, and do you have any idea how much energy it takes to accelerate small pieces of metal to supersonic speeds? Let’s just say that if a malfunction happens and one of those guns explodes, it is going to make one big boom. That is a hypothetical situation, but I made sure that the power source is protected for any eventuality I could think of.
Using the same material their subdermal armor is made of, except much thicker, I ensured such accidents would never happen, and if they did the explosion would be directed away from the user. Now, there is an option to overload the capacitors and produce an intentional explosion by removing all the safeties, which can only be done with the help of an AI, and that means me.
The rounds those guns fire are in another category above conventional ones. I called them flechettes, as I started from that design. Little darts that fly straight, but as the design advanced, I realized that such ammunition would work much more efficiently if it was a bit more aerodynamic. If you think the accuracy would suffer from it, think again, my little rounds shoot true every time. Since they have these small fins, they are rotating at considerable speed and tend to slice through everything in their path. Nasty little things, if you happen to be on the receiving end, but great if you are the one firing.
There are so many more things I could mention, but I have more important things to do right now. Finding a clue about what is hidden on the bottom of the Mariana Trench for one, and there are hundreds of other projects I have going on. Search some of our databases for additional explanation on the tech we are using, there are so many cool things that I made… did I say how awesome I am?
