"Oops," made from this image on Pixabay overlaid with a pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09
There is a cost to be paid for breaking the general laws of physics as mere humans, and those physics say, "Light is the speed limit. Warp drive faster at your species' peril."
Already, by the late 20th century, the near-impossibility of humanity ever having a warp drive was known, but scientist Miguel Alcubierre knew, mathematically and even within general relativity, that the possibility was not zero, and worked out how it could be done. However, he himself admitted that if it could be done, a warp drive would be capable of going backwards in time, and if that were possible, then humanity could mess up its own timeline and cease to exist. Other scientists of his time proposed there were quantum physics effects that would prevent that -- and they were right, generally.
The Vulcans, however, found a way around those quantum effects in the short-term. But they are a long-lived race born under a star many times larger and hotter than Earth's sun -- the cost, therefore, was not as high for them.
The equally-long lived Uppaaimar, also not knowing Einstein or Alcubierre, had solved the problem of long-distance space travel much in the manner that both had said might be possible -- their Warp-Canal was an stable wormhole of warp fields, and their ships were able to induce a singularity that allowed them to "fold" any tract of space to another one and go through the fourth dimension like a needle through thread. However, when both their suns had gone into Wolf-Rayet shedding and destroyed the atmosphere of their homeworld Uppaaim, they, forever away from home, were paying the cost that neither the Vulcans nor humanity knew about until Admiral Benjamin Banneker, in his work to make sure humanity would never mess in any other civilization's timeline with warp drive, returned to the first principles of Alcubierre and his peers to build out his work.
"They say the devil is in the details," he said, "and sometimes, the crises are in the corollaries."
We had all been drawn into the royal circle of the Ninth Majestical House of the Uppaaimar because that house had chosen my husband, Capt. Rufus Dixon, to find the last remaining key to the Uppaaimar Warp-Canal of myth and legend. This allowed traffic and commerce in the area, and such secrets as the Uppaaimar, judging humanity and its neighbors to be sufficiently calmed down, had left to be discovered, buried deep within Uppaaim.
This also was the Uppaaimarn way of asking for help. They wanted to come home to the Milky Way, their search outside of it equally fruitless for a place to find permanent rest, for strangely, none of them had aged naturally since leaving their homeworld. Consequentially, their numbers were far greater than could even live on Uppaaim again even if that were possible ... but also consequentially, they were outliving their mental health capacities, and Uppaaimarn are not only telepathic, but far too technologically advanced for that to be safe for life anywhere in the universe, for if they can map it, they can reach it.
The Ninth Majestical House were the iMaru, the famed "wise men" that had pinpointed for all the Looking communities by searching all the stars in the Milky Way that the Redeemer of the Universe would be born under a particular star -- Sol -- and they had seen the Christmas Star on its track and known when their human wise men counterparts had been on the move. They had known there was a purpose to the Uppaaimar being forced away from home ... they had the news that all the Looking communities of the universe needed to hear. They also knew that the people of Sol had no chance of surviving should the ageless Uppaaimar all go mad -- and so, their agelessness was a problem that needed solving.
My husband is an engineer, and his business partner, Capt. Marcus Aurelius Kirk Jr., is also not a scientist, but Mark's wife is Adm. Vlarian Triefield, the highest ranking science officer in the fleet, and it was to her that Prince Shaaka iMaru reached out for help with the problem of finding out if there was a consortium world that could be fit for the Uppaaimar to come back to the Milky Way to live out their days.
Some things were obvious, of course: the planet Uppaaim was in the habitable zone of a binary-star system, and stable three-body systems are incredibly rare although Uppaaim as a planet was so small and had such little gravity relatively that its two binary supergiant stars still related more or less as a two-body system. The Uppaaimar had searched far and wide -- there was nothing like their twin Uppaai with a planet in its habitable zone that they had found yet. Admiral Triefield knew this was somehow the key to the Uppaaimarn aging problem as well, but exactly how eluded her until she had seen my uncle's complete report on how exactly he planned to keep fleet ships from warping backwards around other suns. Uppaaimarn star mapping, and the uniqueness of Sol in it, was a backup element, but, Uncle Benjamin had actually returned to Alcubierre and his peers for a fail-safe plan.
It was a family evening with Uncle Benjamin, Aunt Almira, my husband, and myself all enjoying some lingering dessert when Adm. Triefield beamed into the foyer. Now, she and all of my uncle's friends had drop-in privileges, but this was no casual affair, for she still had her uniform in all its no-higher-rank-in-the-fleet glory on, her masses of black hair still bound up and highlighting the slight copper tinge to her olive skin. Her eyes were dark, and deep, and troubled.
"At ease," she said upon arriving. "Because you are the Key Bearer of the Uppaaimar, Capt. Rufus Dixon, and because you are my protege as I am Adm. Banneker-Jackson's, you may stay, Captain Khadijah Biles-Dixon, and because you are just back in the fleet and handling large diplomatic matters with your usual vigor and aplomb, you also may stay, Capt. Almira Banneker-Jackson. Some of this is going to be a series of secrets we cannot keep anyhow."
"You came in person, Admiral," my uncle said. "It must be of great import."
"The entire course of human exploration in space was changed by one mad captain using a warp drive as Alcubierre said it must not be done," Adm. Triefield said. "You are repairing the damage on that side, Adm. Banneker-Jackson, and in doing so have uncovered a fact that is still going to alter our movement through space forever, from this point."
Vlarian Triefield is still that one science officer who can switch to the belligerent side and blow your whole species away without batting an eye if necessary -- she does not get called for that any more, but everyone knows she could still do it. And that's the thing I noticed for the first time: she too is almost ageless. We all knew that she was a quarter-Vulcan owing to her Vulcan grandmother being the only survivor of a crash on Spica 5 and taken in by the early colonists there. Her grandmother, Mama T'Lari, was still alive, happily pushing around 200 years old with a granddaughter about to be 75. But even then: Mama T'Lari was aging just a little slower than an average Vulcan, and Admiral Triefield, still three-quarters human, could still have been 45-50 by appearance.
"Explain it to everyone here, Adm. Banneker-Jackson, because everyone here has a stake in it as does every human across the galaxy," Adm. Triefield continued. "Just how does your adjustment to warp drive design keep fleet ships from ever going to warp around any star but the sun?"
"I went back to the data available about the creation of the warp drive from 1994 when Miguel Alcubierre began his work, and then read all the responses to it until about 2024. The consensus, which proved correct, was that since building a drive that can go faster-than-light means the building of a time machine is implied, quantum effects would combine to prevent any matter wired to proceed forward in time only from achieving speeds above light speed. Alcubierre admitted to this problem, but then said what was implied need not be done, and the problem would only occur if the warp drive was so used in that fashion. In other words, there was a theoretical way to go around the problem. Humanity did not find that way, but the Vulcans did."
"So, how are you adjusting warp engine design to safeguard us from destroying other civilizations' timelines?"
"By essentially letting both Alcubierre and his critics be right again, outside the Solar System -- by restructuring how our ships create a warp field so that if they do attempt to go to warp around any star but our Sun, the quantum effects predicted will kick in."
"Raveling the Unraveling," made of a pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09 overlaid on itself
"Generally, Alcubierre was right. Time travel is implied in having a warp drive, but we should not act on the implication except for Earth's sake in the greatest emergencies. Alcubierre is therefore referenced in the Prime Directive, which is why I remembered him."
"The elegance of your solution is that it requires no action from any crew member once the update is completed -- the destruction of the vessel before it can go to warp around any other star but the Sun has no reference to the self-destruct sequence. It merely allows physics known in the 20th century to take their course. The Sun poses an exception. Why, Admiral Banneker-Jackson?"
"The Sun has its own unique effects on space-time in its region that are unique. In their presence, the usual Vulcan enhancements will still apply, making time travel still possible inside the Solar System."
"Summarize Corollary A of your work, Admiral."
"I have to give credit here to Admiral Thomas Jefferson, once in cadet years my rival, now a good friend and esteemed colleague. He has forgotten more about our Sun and its characteristics than I ever knew before working closely with him. He says this: the Sun adds its own unique flavor to space-time, and he chose flavor because of flavor's complexity in dealing with our senses. As stars go, our Sun is a run-of-the-mill yellow dwarf main sequence star to those who have not considered its spectrum, its cycles, its gravitational relationship to all of the rest of the Solar System, and many more things. Cinnamon and chili powder are both brown to the eye, but when you taste, you know the difference -- that's how different the Sun is from all of the other stars in the universe.
"Corollary A simply expands that out: all stars cause unique effects on space-time within their influence. They all have a flavor profile, and are not interchangeable, although, like in cooking, you might in such a large spice cabinet find a substitute if you really need one for a particular purpose."
"The Uppaairmarn problem," my husband breathed, and my uncle jumped. "You just solved it."
"Yes," Admiral Triefield said. "That was the thought I had in reading Corollary A. Although there is no star system exactly like Uppaaim that we or the Uppaaimar know of as far as we and they have looked, we just need to find one that, within its habitable zone, is close to the same profile in terms of gravitational and radiation effects. There are several good candidates, ladies and gentlemen, based on just my initial searching within the parameters of Corollary A!"
"A six-century tragedy, solved -- ended -- just like that!" I cried.
"I knew I married the right one!" Aunt Almira said.
"Now, we still have to test Corollary A just like we do the rest of it," Uncle Benjamin said, but the tears went down his cheeks anyhow. "I do hope it pans out, though."
"So modest, with a zero percent failure rate in 61 years," Adm. Triefield said.
"My number has to come up sometime, though," he said, and we laughed ... but Adm. Triefield's smile faded fast.
"The deeper challenge of Corollary A, combined with the potential solution of the Uppaaimarn problem, is what it means for humanity in space, since, although Sol is unique, it is also average, and we are a short-lived species "seasoned" by it. For my Vulcan grandmother, living under a slightly less intense star in radiation and gravity than her DNA is wired for, it makes little difference, except that her aging has slightly decelerated."
It took a few moments for our minds to catch up with what she was saying.
"Wait, what?" my husband said.
"If Corollary A is correct, and the Uppaaimarn problem can likewise be solved and they can age and die under a star profile close enough to their twin Uppaai," Adm. Triefield said, "then that means aging for humans and humanoids is tied into the flavor of space-time given by their home star. Mess with that -- or, say leave your home star system before you understand what you are doing -- and you are messing with the lifespan and by now the genome of your entire species. The Uppaaimarn are one case of how bad this can get -- but they, like the Vulcans, are a long-lived species anyhow. They average about 250-300 years, and are resilient physically and mentally -- they have borne an extension of their lifespans by six centuries exceedingly well. But they were created for centuries of longevity, and also have lost few of their cohort because they are age-locked together. Humans are not either of those two things."
"Houston, we have a problem," Aunt Almira said.
"And it's been going on a long time," my husband said.
"The core of the problem is already outlined in the Uppaaimarn genome," Adm. Triefield said. "They are a multi-planetary, multi-galactic species, and they have borne children wherever they have settled, but again: for them, six centuries is just two generations. There are only slight changes from say, Prince Shaaka's father, King Siokkharn, to those of his great-grandchildren -- but they are there, and the deviations are as follows. If you were created for one flavor of time-space, and you live most of your life in that star system, everything works the way it is supposed to. That's within the limit of ordinary species adaptation. But if you were created for one star system, and you settle elsewhere, this sets up dissonance in your genome because that is outside normal species capacity for adaptation.
"Vulcans always go home," I said. "Their mating cycle requires it, but in general, they do not find it logical to colonize the galaxy, so they, the progenitors of the operable warp drive, always go home."
"And this is why Vulcans don't have a problem here," Adm. Triefield said. "My grandmother crash-landed on Spica 5, but she would not have otherwise stayed. They also have a long lifespan, are wired for a very powerful star, and tend to have their children at home. For them, six centuries is still just 2.4 full generations, so if there are effects of their four centuries of space travel, they still are relatively few."
"But humanity has already accounted for 8-10 generations of living under different stars because we always colonize where we can," Uncle Benjamin said, "and although the Sun is average, and we have tended to colonize around more-or-less similar stars, we have no idea."
"Or at least we didn't, Uncle, before Corollary A," I said. "Now, we have one idea."
"We have two ideas," Adm. Triefield said, "because using Corollary A as a marker, I have rerun my own genome -- complex because a quarter-Vulcan, further complex because one has to look at the human and Vulcan genome under Spica 5. My family volunteered to give us two generations, and my children, growing up on Earth, represent generation three. This is by no means conclusive, but ... ."
"Oh, you are going to live a long time, Admiral," Uncle Benjamin said. "Sol is a weak star compared with both Spica 5 and Vulcan, and so if Corollary A is correct, both your genomes are not going to age anywhere near on schedule in the Solar System."
"Corollary A, at least looking at one family, does bear out," Adm. Triefield said. "Average human lifespan is about 120 years now, and average Vulcan lifespan is about 250, so you would expect me to maybe make 135-150, and my half-Vulcan captain cousin perhaps 180 years. No. We have been coming home to Sol all our lives. Our results suggest he may make it to the lower end of a full-Vulcan lifespan, and I'll see 180, at least."
"So, instead of being halfway through your expected lifespan, you're just past a third," I said. "No wonder you look like you are about 45 years old in human terms: you are, Admiral."
"I see the problem," my husband said. "If the Uppaaimar are beginning to experience mental health problems because they are outliving their psychological resilience limits, that's going to happen much faster in humans. We don't like to talk about it in human terms, but 120 years is already too long for many."
"The Uppaaimar have problems we don't have, of course, being telepathic and telekinetic in old age," Adm. Triefield said. "This is why they recognize the widespread challenges of not solving their aging problem within another century or so. But they also have resilience we don't have.
"Now, correlation is not causation, but there is another issue: what happens to mental and psychological stability when you have multiple generations of humans all wired for Sol but their genomes adjusted differently in multiple steps? The reason we are having this conversation is because a fleet captain went mad around a different star in a way that none of our systems to catch mental and psychological problems caught -- but it just so happens that he is a product of eight different settlements, eight generations down.
"It also just so happens that when you examine the outcomes of different fleet veterans at the end in terms of mental health, those who were born in the Solar System and return to Earth to live out their days and have a family history of the same do best. Those who were born in another star system and return to that star system to live out their lives and have a family history of the same do almost as well. Those who were born in another star system and come home to our Solar System to live out their lives and have a family history without three or more generational changes in star system residence do almost as well as the first two groups.
"But in the groups that have three or more changes including themselves in star system residence in their family history do poorly in terms of their long-term mental and psychological health, and if there are more than five changes across that history, even coming home to the Solar System no longer provides any protection."
"Yikes," my husband said. "It's a good thing we learned all this before we have any children, Khadijah."
"Indeed, because running multiple different definitions of what time-space is in your genes cannot be healthy for anyone's resilience," Aunt Almira said.
"And the challenge is, it's too late," Uncle Benjamin said. "Alcubierre's peers said it couldn't be done. Alcubierre himself said part of it shouldn't be done, and that part explicitly about time travel is in the Prime Directive. But by definition, a warp drive is a time machine, and if you use it to get out past where your star flavors your time ..."
"It looks like quantum physics is still saying NO," Admiral Triefield said. "It's just taken this long for us to hear it."
"Maybe, but maybe not," Aunt Almira said. "The observation about Vulcans always going home and doing far more exploration than colonization has to have a logical reason because of how they are. I would wager anyone even money that in the 22nd century, the Vulcans who passed the warp drive onto us had some idea about what we are talking about."
Adm. Triefield considered this.
"It's easy enough to find out, because Vulcan scientists have never been shy about recording what they share and what other civilizations choose to do or not do with the information."
Sure enough -- it only took twenty minutes of searching the records -- .
"'Although the use of the warp drive has enabled the possibility of the long-term settlement of worlds outside Vulcan's star system, we find it illogical to do so in light of potential negative impacts about the effects of other stars on the natural aging process in the Vulcan genome. Because the human genome is both wired for a total optimal lifespan only half that of the Vulcan genome, and also for much more rapid reproduction of generations, this caution is duly passed on,'" Adm. Triefield read aloud. "That is from the year 2155, so you are right, Capt. Jackson."
"Blowing through stop signs -- how human of us!" Capt. Jackson said.
"We blew through the stop signs when Alcubierre and his peers recorded them," Uncle Benjamin said, "and that's even before the turn of the 21st century."
"We heard what we wanted to hear from Alcubierre," my husband said, "and ignored the rest."
"How human of us, still," I said. "So what do we do?"
"Stay on course -- first we will need to see if the main body of Adm. Banneker-Jackson's work works, and if it does, then we can consider Corollary A and the resettlement of the Uppaaimar in a star system that approximates their own. If that works, and their aging process resumes on New Uppaaim, then we will know Corollary A, and the Vulcans in 2155, are both right."
"You'll know the first part of all that in a month, Admiral," Uncle Benjamin said.
"I know," she said. "I also know it is going to work, and that all of it will ... and then we have to deal with the unintended consequences of being 20 years from the 24th century before listening to what we were warned about in 1994."
"Darn near three full centuries of the law of unintended consequences at work," Aunt Almira said.
"It's the runaway quantum physics for me," Capt. Rufus Dixon said, "working in slow motion over all that time to destroy us because we broke the light speed limit."
"Still an exciting time to be a scientist," Uncle Benjamin said, "and, someone can go tell the Earth Footprint Movement that they need not worry any more about humanity being inside the Solar System when the Redeemer comes. Quantum physics, eventually, is going to force the issue. There will be a natural limit to humanity's ability to live outside the Solar System, and we've just found out what it is. Call it Corollary B."
We all considered this.
"Don't call it, for now, Benjamin," Adm. Triefield said, "but when we are finished with the main body and cleaning up after the accident that brought all this to our attention, then I will assign you to study it out, and that will be top secret when it is done for quite some time. Humanity is scarcely ready for Corollary A, Alcubierre and his peers, and our Vulcan friends from 2155 -- it will be a long time yet before it is ready for Corollary B. But, it will be there on time."
Author's Note: This story was inspired by this video: