The Immediate Sound of Distant Hammers
A short story
There is a bug in the code of the universe.
There is a bug in the code of the universe left there for humanity.
There is a bug in the code of the universe left there for humanity, and it is going to change everything.
Across the Eastern hemisphere, televisions stopped working as expected. For 70 seconds, a VHF burst in the sky blinded everything that could see radio waves. There were failures that could not be predicted, of course. But that was the cost we agreed to. To ascend.
Cpt Ochoa confirmed the test dive was successful. Hull maintained integrity, computer systems were operational, and the crew was safe. It was the first crewed expedition and nothing went wrong. As they predicted.
At this distance, it would take 8 minutes to hear back from Earth.
As signal dazzle subsided, ground control in Brazil confirmed receipt. Shortly thereafter, dump telemetry from the ship's glow array was received and verified. No anomalies except for a slight change in piston velocity. Within limits.
It was time to dive outside the solar system.
There is a bug in the code of the universe.
In a vacuum, metals brought together without oxidation are expected to spontaneously weld together. Because atomically they have no idea they aren’t the same mass. In 2056, it was found a specific Tungsten alloy at several thousand degrees does not produce this result. It does something different.
It does not weld, but instead produces a space-time deflection that's an inverse-square of the combined force.
And if you have several of these devices running at the same time, striking a row of these hammers in perfect vacuum, you start getting output. Structured output.
An atomic clock positioned in line with the tungsten piston, and one orthogonal to the strike point, both compared to an atomic clock several miles away to determine nominal, could be treated as a quaternary base-4 subunit.
And it let you converse with the machinery running reality.
Some theorized this was a debug console with the underlying physical algorithm.
Religious leaders and academics debated if it meant reality was a simulation, or this was just how the universe functions.
After all, why would the universe’s substrate be different than a computational paradigm?
The first interstellar spacecraft, UNN Gusmão confirmed approval to proceed.
ROWHAMMER drive was programmed to dive below the substrate, and surface in the Vega system.
Due to the ship's mass, it took over a year to get to a safe distance from Earth logical hypercube space.
There is a bug in the code of the universe left there for humanity.
"I still don't get it," said Rico.
Professor Loya sighed, and pulled out the large grid she had used for 30 years. "You reach across the desk and grab a drink. It has to be in proximity for you to reach it."
The class quietly nodded.
"But you are experiencing the world presented to you and constructed in real-time. A lower-level process you can't perceive is assembling the logical spatial area, which it can pull from any physical address in lower substrate memory."
Class nodded again, like all the others had for years.
Professor Loya picked up a chalk, which she only used sparingly to emphasize the importance of what she was saying, and drew a 5x5 grid.
"What if the logical area here," she made an X on the substrate grid, "could effect an area here," she made another mark on a box next to it on a different column, “because it is stored next to an address in a non-consecutive but wrapping column on the substrate that brings them next to eachother.”
A student answered, "You could impact an area you can't touch logically, but can somehow influence on the substrate."
Loya slammed the desk. "Exactly. A flaw in substrate proximity would allow you to cheat."
"The speed of light," said another student.
Processor Loya smiled.
There is a bug in the code of the universe left there for humanity to take, and it is going to change everything.
UNN Gusmão was already in diving configuration, five ROWHAMMER drives each extended kilometers away, in V pattern, open end forward. Heaters prepared the manifolds and their opposing pistons on linear actuators
When activated, multiple sets of two pistons arranged in a row would strike their mirrored surfaces together in vacuum. Each piston's two measured +/- time deflections were then made into binary values modulated to or from a non-symbolic quaternary serial interface.
ROWHAMMER was both output and input to our universe, determined by a carrier piston strike frequency in the heart of the spacecraft. Through brute-force, a subset of the basic protocol had already been determined. It was, essentially, talking to the controller firmware for the storage engine of reality's state. Like an SSD.
Each storage unit of the physical 3-Dimensional universe was held in a 5-Dimensional substrate grid that seemed to have boundaries on all sides. Thus, a physical unit in the Solar System could be stored logically next to another column holding areas in Vega. Or, really anywhere. But most of the universe is empty. You only wanted to jump to known destinations.
Although the mostly read-only substrate protocol had various interesting debug output commands, which had already been explored extensively on Earth to contribute to physics research, there were ways to write and retrieve data in some kind of metadata bucket. This was the key.
It was found that if you could have a ROWHAMMER in multiple substrate buckets and force-feed them metadata beyond expected limits, things would start going wrong. This was the reason Mars was colonized. To insulate Earth from the consequences of holding a gun at the head of the universe.
Concerted ROWHAMMER data confusion had some kind of impact on logically proximate substrate buckets, and could slowly force commands into the substrate command channel.
UNKNOWN
UNKNOWN
MOVE
CLEAR
That was the command set that tore Mars through its axis during experimentation.
Afterwards, ROWHAMMER research would exclusively be done on autonomous spacecraft safely apart from any solar gravity well. Hundreds of these autonomous craft were lost across centuries. After, multiple intra-solar crewed research also perished. But in their wake was establishment of expertise.
The command MOVE was discovered cataclysmically. Any gravitational influence of Mercury was small, but measurable.
Mercury now lingered in the extremes of the Oort Cloud, signature VHF burst betraying what had happened by chance several days later. With the loss of two planets, none involved had illusions of the danger they were playing with.
Earth was dying. With Mars bastion gone – a halfplanet tumbling hell reforming around its metallic core – there were no alternatives in Solar. All resources possible had been boosted to orbit. Now, the species would expand or it would cease.
UNN Gusmão promised salvation.
Because configuration of the lower universe substrate was not controllable, you could not simply choose which buckets were proximate to yours. However, solutions could be mapped to chain between these buckets, arriving at an intended destination.
Sails adapt, but follow the wind.
Gusmão's path was charted to take it to Vega, then several newly-discovered astronomical phenomena that had indications of mega-scale engineering. Ground control gave a go. Drives spooled, locking to substrate protocol. And the command channel was flooded. It was time to dive.
Several minutes later, Earth was once again blanketed in VHF. When the invisible flash subsided in Earth's sky, Gusmão was gone. In relative time, the ship's campaign would take several weeks. No comm's until return. Bucket contents had to traverse the chains for it to work.
After jump, ROWHAMMER drive control of UNN Gusmão reported their pistons, largely spun down but maintaining substrate lock, were requiring more impulse to cycle. If this was due to warping of the manifolds or physical changes was not immediately known. It was still under investigation when the bridge alarmed.
Due to resource constraints accorded on magnitude needed of future construction for extra-solar migration, the ship was by far the largest ever to dive. They were in a war against time and ecological collapse. The American atomic bomb only needed one test before being fielded. Scientists knew it would work.
Except, this electromagnetic explosion was not going according to plan. No VHF returns had hit Gusmão sensors. In fact, no wavelengths period were being detected. There was no star. Yet they had jumped to the right place. Hadn't they? The dive schedule would be brought forward.
Cpt Ochoa convened the dive engineers and substrate scientists to check their assumptions. A gravitational map was developed, perhaps a rouge black hole had perturbed the system. But that didn't make sense, pre-dive debug indicated surrounding buckets would have expected mass.
After a day, ROWHAMMER drives were once again heated, spooled, and fully locked to command channel.
Jump.
Blindness. The bridge of UNN Gusmão was in shock. Again, there was no star system. And ROWHAMMER once again degraded in efficiency. Worse, the elemented had become radio-active.
In the mountains of Austria, a radio observatory doing a normal sweep of the northern hemisphere sky logged a strange anomaly. In the VHF range, it was a pinprick of a burst 70 seconds long. It was only by chance their sweep saw it. It was posted on group chat by a bot.
Elsewhere, amateur astronomers saw two shocking developments. A new star shockingly close to Earth. Not quite the same distance as Vega, but notable. No one was sure what to make of this. They would have seen the spark of a newly burning star years ago.
Then Vega disappeared.
There was no way this was related to the Gusmão shakedown run, it would have taken around 30 years for the light and VHF burst to reach Earth from these distances.
Then another astrological body disappeared. The next on UNN Gusmão's chain. Another star like it appeared nearby.
The curious new star had same expected mass, but was earlier in sequence on expanding to become a red giant star. Several thousand light years away, it would have taken that time for the information to reach Earth.
It was late in Professor Loya's day when she heard the news.
“Oh my god."
There is a bug in the code of the universe.
UNN Gusmão prepared for jump back to Sol. As a precautionary measure, it would first make visit beyond the heliosphere. Transiting such a large mass, the ROWHAMMER pistons had become doped to a heavier radionuclide of tungsten.
On Earth, Professor Loya explained her case to the hastily-organized conference. “Yes, we did this,” exasperated, “the ship isn't just transferring to a new substrate bucket.”
“The bucket transit envelope has enlarged for some reason, maybe by alteration of the ROWHAMMER drive, hit existing mass in the destination, and shunted it.”
“Shunted where? You don't have edit or injection control with ROWHAMMER. We always sweep the destination to make sure the mass is below threshold.”
“But you're looking at the nominal bucket size. What if the ROWHAMMER drive started to interface with a larger bucket size? With un-cleared additional mass?”
“Again, professor, shunted it where?”
Loya steeled herself with the most exotic thing she had ever posited.
“The only place it can go. The future hasn't happened yet. The present can't hold these buckets. We're sending these star systems back in time.”
The sound of simulated static on the conference call increased a thousand fold. “And they're jumping back to us.”
”When?”
“The plan says after two failed jumps.”
“But that would mea[…]"
Elsewhere in the galaxy, an extinct bird made its first mating call.