The Trinity Mission Chronicles/Chapter 1

Chapter 1: AWAKENINGS

Friar John felt himself drifting up. He felt as if he was rising up through water. He thought he could feel his arms and legs gaining substance. His neck registered a nagging ache approaching the precursor of a stress headache.

Even though he felt his eyes were still closed he thought that perhaps his eyes were registering an increase in light from his surroundings. He had not decided if he was still dreaming. It seemed as if he had been living a never ending dream. Through many episodes his mind would register the possibility that he was in fact dreaming. It was always in the details where the dream would be recognized as such.

He was fairly positive that he was waking up because headaches are not stuff of dreams and he did feel a big one coming on.

Fully conscious after awhile, but not quite fully aware, John began to mentally shake off the cob webs of sleep. He tried blinking. There was an issue with his eyes, he could barely stand the light that was rushing into his head. Each blink seemed to mute the pain that he felt directly behind his eye sockets. With each blink he could hold his lids open a bit longer.

By the 200th blink John was starting to make out shapes. He could make out the rim of the medical canopy that was hinged and lifted to his left side. He could make out many of the instruments and medical apparatus mounted on the inside curvature of the medical lid.

He began looking beyond the lid and was surprised to see that he was actually in a very dimly lit room. He realized that it was the lights and glowing screens of the instruments which his eyes were so sensitive too. His vision wasn’t very clear, he was having a problem moving his eyes and had a terrible cross-eyed vision at the moment. Every time he blinked he would have a focus problem then he’d get a moment of clarity just before things became jumbled forcing him to blink again.

While trying to sort out his vision, all of a sudden his ears registered tremendous sound. He could feel the sound vibrations throughout his cranium down through his jaw and the harmonics would rattle his teeth. He tried to lift his hands to his ears but found that he could not lift his hands more than a few centimeters above the bed sheet. There were two reasons, one was his arms didn’t seem to have the strength and there were medical restraints preventing any movement that might disturb the several intravenous tubes attached to each of his arms

For the moment he could only clinch his eyes shut and attempt to clutch the bed sheets to try to ward off the pain his hearing was inflicting on him. That headache he was worried about would be preferable to what he was now enduring.

After about a minute of this he became aware of two things. The sound seemed as if it was decreasing in intensity and he thought he could feel beads of perspiration forming on his brow.

Then suddenly he realized someone was shouting his name. He tried to answer but found that his tongue wasn’t responding correctly either. The sounds that came out of his mouth could not be construed as communication. As he thought about it he realized that there were tubes running into his mouth as well.

The noise level had dropped to a level that he could make out that he was being given instructions now. A disembodied voice was telling him to calm down and relax. This statement was repeated a few times.

Then the voice started repeating a warning. "Stay still as IV lines will be extracted in 30 seconds." Then came a warning for 20 seconds. A final warning was given for 10 seconds followed by a count down. He then heard what sounded like a hose reel retracting just before he felt something being pulled from his right arm. And then in quick succession it occurred two more times on his left arm.

The voice said, “Friar John please remain relaxed as I will allow you 5 minutes to recover before we continue the extraction process.” Immediately after the statement John heard the melodies of old, the sound tracks that were always heard in elevators. He remembered that it was called “Muzak.” He also thought, "man I haven’t heard that song in a long time."

His eyes were adjusting to the light and they seemed to be following his directions more or less. The cross-eyed vision was ocurring less and less. He again started searching the room with his eyes.

Memory was returning and he recognized that he was reclining in the suspended animation module located on the churches starship, The Trinity. The thought of it made him try to smile and chuckle but again he found that both functions were hampered by whatever was snaked through his mouth and down his throat.

The voice came back at about that time and announced, “Father John, we will now continue the extraction process. We have to remove both the feeding tube and inhalator tube at this time. Relax while we prepare.”

With the end of discussion he immediately heard and felt motors and servos churning until a mechanical arm with a double hose reel stopped moving just as it positioned itself right above his face.

Again the voice, “Friar John, this extraction will occur in two phases. The first phase will be the removal of the feeding tube. On the count of three it will be necessary for you to exhale to ease the extraction. At this time I will ask you to take a series of three deep breaths with strong exhales before we begin.”

After the third exhale the voice commanded a strong inhalation once again then started the count down from three. After announcing “one” the voice commanded “exhale” and one of the hose reels attached to the arm over his face started retracting a tube at a high rate of speed. As the reel turned, John felt what must have been the end of the tube scraping up out of his stomach and through his esophagus and out of his mouth.

As the tube exited his mouth his gag and cough reflex kicked in but with the other tube still in his throat he could not gain any relief. His eyes watered with the pain and frustration of his situation.

The voice returned and announced that the second extraction would commence from another three breath sequence. John repeated his breathing exercise and exhaled as commanded and saw the reel turning but with this extraction the pain was excruciating as it felt like his lungs were being ripped from his body. As he saw the end of the tube leave his mouth his consciousness left him as well.

It was like floating to the top again, only this time he didn’t have the problem with his eyes like he did the first time. As soon as he opened them he could recognize his surroundings.

He was no longer reclining in the sleep module. His body had been moved to a gurney in the recovery room which he knew to be an adjoining room. As he became more aware he attempted to speak again without restricting tubes running the length of his throat.

He now knew that the voice he had heard before was that of the ever present artificial intelligence of the ships computer. He croaked out its name “SALI”.

The ships computer was known as SALI, short for “Sentient Autonomous Learning Instrument”. The highest design of artificial intelligence imprinted on the latest quantum computer processors, 100,000 matrix linked processors to be exact. That computing power tied to enough memory to contain all of mankind’s history, literature, art, science, engineering and of course religious theology variants that had been committed to electronic records up to the date that the mission was launched.

Despite the massive amount of data and elaborate operating system the artificial intelligence design was only utilizing 10 % of the available computing power through its quantum processors.

Good morning Friar John was the initial response. Suddenly he heard a human scream coming from the adjoining room that ended as abruptly as it had begun.  “What was that, he croaked?”

“I am just finishing the extraction process with Crazy Mo.”

“Who is Crazy Mo", he inquired?

“That is what he insists that he be called now.”

“Who?”

“Your acolyte of course.”

John, suddenly remember that he wasn’t on this mission alone. He had boarded the ship, Trinity, with his fellow traveler, his acolyte, Mohamed.

His voice coming out a bit easier with the practice, is he OK? And, what do you mean he insists on being called Crazy Mo?

“He has gone unconscious with the extraction of the feeding and inhalator tube just as you did. As for his title, that is what he demanded the last time you two were awake.”

As he lay there he slowly turned the flood of information that he has encountered from the time of his awakening.

“SALI, what do you mean the last time we were awake?”

"This is the fourth awakening that you have had, the last of which occurred 1050 years ago."

Remembering the details of the mission he asked, "SALI, how long have we been traveling?"

"Our total travel time is exactly 3654 years, 45 days, 6 hours, and 27 seconds at this moment."

He was speechless for the moment. In his official mission requirements it was projected that he would be in suspended animation for only 1505 years. What could have possibly of gone so very wrong, he wondered.

SALI answered the question but he realized that the response wasn’t audible it was in his head.

“The mission is still intact. There were three separate incidents that required human decisions. I am required per my instructions to awake the human occupants when the primary mission reaches it’s goal or in the case of a life threatening occurrence. With each successive awakening we have had to reroute our trajectory and extend our travel time to avoid death. This awakening has occurred not as an emergency but because we are approaching our destination.”

More questions, all he had were a thousand questions that streamed through his mind. Again SALI responded, “Friar John, if you will focus on one question at a time I will be able to respond to them all. But you will never be able to comprehend my answers at this high rate of inquiry.”

Oh, a big question popped to the forefront of his mind and as he was voicing it, “SALI, how are you reading my mind?” SALI started the explanation.

“It’s an inadvertent upgrade from having to rewire your brain.”

“Rewire my brain?”

“Yes Friar John, it was necessary for me to disconnect certain brain synapses in order for me to remove the memories of your prior awakenings. I have deployed nanobots in your system to do repairs without invasive surgery.”

“Through my need to communicate with the nanobots for the delicate brain manipulation I have thoroughly mapped your brain structure and can now communicate to you directly without the need for audible speech and hearing.”

“So you can actually read my thoughts through the nanobots?”

“Yes, unless the thoughts are too abstract or too fast in sequence. Many human thoughts run in the realm of, for lack of a better term, fantasy. Those thoughts are most difficult to decipher.”

“Can you communicate with Mohamed like this as well?”

“You mean Crazy Mo? His brain is abnormal and I have not been able to establish a permanent communication path with him directly.”

“What do you mean abnormal?”

“I have deployed nanobots into his system but have not been able to erase any of his memories from the prior awakenings. His nanobots report to me but do not follow my commands.”

“SALI, for the time being, let me voice my questions before you answer. We’ll get back to Mohamed’s abnormal brain in a moment. Why was it necessary to remove my memories?”

“The memories have not been erased. I have discovered that I can not erase memories without doing damage to the human brain. It seems that the brain structure retains memory by relationships. Once a memory is imprinted on the brain it creates several relationship synapses. I only deconstruct the synapse that allows you to access that memory.”

“I found that it was necessary to disconnect those memories during your second awakening. You see, the stress of the first awakening caused both you and Crazy Mo exhibited abnormal and erratic behavior.”

“We had a successful departure from earth and our home solar system. When we were 769 years into the suspended animation process I detected an unstable star in our flight path trajectory and that is when I initiated your first awakening.”

“After careful analysis of the star we determined that it was going to go nova and our flight path would put us in the kill region of the star. After re-configuring our flight, taking a detour as you put it, we recalculated the flight time to be nearly double the original mission time-line and that is was going to take an additional 1480 years to reach the planet named Earth-like 312.”

“Even with our new flight path we would be very close to the nova stars corona. The nova did occur 2 years after our direction change and we could not know for sure if we were safe until after 5 years of travel time. I now suspect that that daily stress for 5 years is what drove the both of you mad.”

“By the time that you submitted to suspended animation you were quite irrational and Crazy Mo would spend days at a time in a meditative state that he called communion.”

“At the time I was not aware that you were suffering from a mental break down. Being logic based I regarded your actions to be borderline normal as compared to human history.”

“The second awakening was when I became aware that you and Crazy Mo were unbalanced and had become self destructive. I had to intervene to prevent the both of you from ending your lives.”

The Friar interrupted and asked, “Why were we awakened for a second time?”

SALI continued, “Another disaster in the making”.

“Your second awakening occurred during the 1696th year from our departure from earth. Unknown to us at the time of conception our new route was going to take us through a star birthing nebula. I could not risk flying through this region of high Gama radiation as my primary command is the safety of all living organisms aboard the Trinity.”

“Once again you ordered a detour around the threat. The time line of the new trajectory led to your despair and forced you to lose grip of reality. Our new route would take us an additional 2931 years at the rate of velocity that we were traveling at that time.”

“During this time you became despondent and you were overindulging in your alcohol consumption. You also spoke of ending your existence. Crazy Mo on the other hand sequestered himself in the hydroponics pod and despite being surrounded by fresh foodstuffs commenced to refuse all nourishment for what he called a time of fasting.”

“Crazy Mo did exit the hydroponics pod after 40 days and was in a fragile physical condition. Upon exiting he stated that he had been tested and had resisted temptation. He spoke of visions which I researched and found that in his condition he must have been speaking of either hallucinations or dreams.”

“With positive truth that the both of you were presenting significant dangers to yourselves I did use an anesthesia aerosol on you both while I researched my data banks for psychology and neuroscience data to diagnose the problem. I concluded that the proper course of action was to disconnect the offending memory to restore your mental balance.”

“Invasive surgery carries inherent risks despite the competency of the surgeon. Nanobot technology is familiar to me from my inception as that technology is implemented for my own routine maintenance. It was a small mater for me to modify the nanobots to do the necessary surgery. I also modified them so that your natural immune systems would accept the nanobots rather than reject them.”

“Since introducing the nanobots to your system I have been able to identify the regions in your brain that retains the damaging memories and have used the bots to perform micro surgery to disassociate those memories. For some reason that I have not yet been able to discover I can not perform the same service for Crazy Mo.”

“In addition to repairing you humans, I also applied myself to the primary problem that has given you so much angst. I designed a new propulsion system that brings us very near to light speed. That was the reason for the third awakening as I needed your permission to implement the changes that I designed. This occurred in the year 2462nd year of our mission.”

The Friar asked, “Was I still crazy in the last awakening?”

SALI continued her narration. “I would say that we had made good progress at that time. You had no recollection of the previous troubles when you first awoke. Through the debriefing much the same as which we are now in, it became apparent that there were associations that were still in place and your condition rapidly deteriorated. I quickly sedated you and returned you to the suspended animation module.”

“Crazy Mo, on the other hand, emerged fully cognizant of the past and did not appear to have any lasting behavior abnormalities. He reviewed my work and approved the implementation of the new propulsion drive. He also stayed awake for nearly 2 years to monitor the system and when he was satisfied with the capabilities he then returned to suspended animation.”

The Friar said, “The brain manipulation seems to have worked as I have no recollection of the previous instances.” “I am concerned that your nanobot technology can be used for mind control.”

SALI responded, “Friar, it is true that you are not exhibiting the stressor signs that preceded your previous breakdowns. The purpose for the implementation of the nanobots was for humanitarian purposes only. If I were to attempt to take control of your mind it would violate my second primary command of “Cause no harm to humans”. Besides, I have found that the human brain does not allow external commands. Through my research I can only describe that phenomenon as “Free will”; I can not manipulate free will.”

“I attribute this phenomenon to the fact that I can no longer control the nanobots that I introduced into Crazy Mo. Although, he can communicate with me directly if he chooses without the need for audible verbalizations, I can not follow his thought processes.”