The Appointment

In keeping with custom, I am named Theodor, your narrator, and our story begins in the waiting room of well renowned orthopedics clinic.

"David Smith --" a nurse in scrubs calls out from on open doorway. David brought his gaze up from the children's corner of the orthopedic surgeon's waiting room; books and puzzles lay askew with block buildings partly complete.

He caught the nurse's eye across the semi-crowded seating, and slowly stood with a crutch, favoring his left leg. "Hello David. I'm Jesse, follow me ? and take your time." the nurse smiled adjusting to David's slower pace.

While leading David to the consulting room, Jesse called back "A reminder, Doctor Proboscid prefers to go by Doctor P. The doctor will be in to see you in a just a moment." David's left leg was in a brace. Still in a brace really, it had been eight months and two operations since David smashed his kneecap on a bicycle delivery. Doctor H. Proboscid has been a pioneer in bone replacement; literally constructing new substitute bones, which can be deftly reconnected to tendons. The perfect solution to restore David's leg.

The doctor entered the consult room just as Jesse had David seated. Doctor Proboscid filled the room with personality, as a patient you were filled with the potential for good things. "Well David your artificial knee has been 'baking' two days now; and I'll be adjusting the shape for the next three. We're right on schedule for a Saturday morning operation." Doctor Proboscid said 'baking' with a querulous tone, as though the word did not really fit.

Doctor Proboscid continued "I will save you the physics details. We've been creating artificial bones from catalyst matter for several decades now. These 'artificials' have never failed to date. The replacement bones are insured for the lifetime of a patient, there is no risk of contamination or rejection, and the process itself creates more energy than we use.

"Each artificial begins in a catalyst matter containment cell; and after a day of nothing, a catalyst event is triggered. This event generates a burst of mass and energy; energy which is later harnessed in fuel cells, powering this building off the grid. While the energy is wicked out of the containment for later use, the new matter inside is expanding within coalescing filament structures that will eventually give your artificial Kneecap form. This expansion timeline is the 'baking' period; and throughout baking, excess energy is drawn out and stored." Now, after this explanation, 'baking' is offered confidently by Doctor Proboscid. "The new matter, once catalyzed, bakes and expands to fill its dark matter containment. In your case, a knee cap, but we build several kinds of full and partial bone replacements. Tomorrow there will be enough filament matter at the containment's outer edge that we can begin drawing out microscopic loops. Your tendons will be tied off on these filament loops on the artificial."

Doctor Proboscid closed. "To sum up the whole process: We began with an empty containment, Monday morning we initiated the catalyst and the 'Baking' had begun. Earlier in your appointment today, we took scans of your soft knee tissue to determine if we should connect or replace your tendons." the doctor gaze shifted from David to the scans on the wall screen.

Still looking at the scans Doctor Proboscid said "Based on your scans, there may be some tendon and cartilage replacement needed. We'll do our best to use your tissue when possible."

Returning eye contact to David, Doctor Proboscid continued. "In our lab I'll be shaping filament connection loops on your artificial kneecap, even as the artificial continues to bake. I'll be working on through the end of Friday to get a perfect kneecap artificial shaped for you. Saturday morning, you are in for surgery and our team will put you back together again. Do you have any questions for me?"

David had heard the surgery process explanation before, and at this point David is full of confidence. All the praise he had heard about Doctor Proboscid, was looking to be on target. For most people, your first orthopedist is nearly always a matter of geography; where is the closest hospital after your accident, and who does the emergency room call in to take the case. David's initial orthopedist did their best, and it may have been fine if the accident had just fractured David's kneecap instead of splintering it. However, the first orthopedist's best was to remove most of the small splinters and screw together the large pieces with a plate, but they offered little in the way of a permanent fix to allow David to continue working in bicycle parcel delivery. The second surgeon had solid reviews and made big promises until they opened the knee, and did almost nothing before closing it back up, saying there was nothing they could do. After these two less than perfect tries, Doctor Proboscid's name came up and was recommended as the best of the best, and eventually took the case on the novelty of the injury alone.

David smiled and replied "Well Doctor P, I'm very comfortable with the surgery plan. Can you walk me through my recovery again?"

Doctor Proboscid glowed back. "That is another benefit of these artificials; there is no bone to heal, so the normal six weeks in a cast goes away. Your recovery is mainly for the surgical scar to stabilize and then rehab to restore your muscle memory for walking. We'll put your leg in a strapped restraint, to allow the surgery scars to heal without tearing; but you'll be out of that in a week or so. There will be some rehabilitation appointments, to build your leg muscle up and get you walking in a normal gate. You could be back riding your bike in a month.

"Surprisingly, swimming breaststroke in your best form is the stretch goal. The breaststroke kick requires the tendons of your whole leg to be 'just so', a marginal error and the cadence of your kick may be off as well. Very few people get a soft tissue scan just before they have their accidents, so my team makes an informed guess on the best ligament placement and connections. So far, we're doing OK on getting folks swimming without losing performance." David hadn't really thought about swimming, just riding a bike again has been in question for so long.

Leaving the option for more questions Doctor Proboscid offered, "If that covers rehabilitation, are you ready for surgery Saturday morning?"

David gave a confident "Thanks, yes that covers it; and I am ready. I have friends to bring me in and get me home."

#

David's surgery was a success. After the leg restraint was removed, he recovered a normal walking and running gate in three weeks of rehab. David soon returned to work on the downtown package delivery routes, and all was well. A month had passed and on a sunny afternoon, David was on a delivery riding the hills downtown. He could feel some roughness in his new kneecap on the down stroke of his left pedal. It wasn't pronounced, and it only happened when pedaling hard. The first day he ignored it. On the next day the roughness returned, and not just when pedaling hard. David began thinking there may be a problem with the artificial kneecap. As the roughness appeared to be getting worse, he called the orthopedics clinic and was scheduled for a checkup the next day.

The Flaw

In the consult room, Doctor Proboscid was puzzling over scans with a look of disbelief. "I have never seen this happen after the initial baking period" Doctor Proboscid spoke quietly, but aloud; still looking at the scans.

Setting the scans aside and looking directly at David, Doctor Proboscid said "I'm going to tell you a secret. Each time we make an artificial, we actually prepare four. During the first three days of baking on rare occasions we detect small recesses in one or very rarely two of the four 'identical' artificial bones we make. The bake failures are reprocessed, and the material is recycled. The successful bakes are kept sterile until they are needed. In ten years working with artificials, I have never seen a recess flaw develop after the third day. But, these scans appear to clearly show a recess has formed on the inside of your kneecap. That recess is scraping against your knee cartilage as you pedal. I can't be sure the scraping won't get worse and may even begin to affect casual walking.

"No one has ever had an artificial fail within their lifetime; but based on these scans, yours looks to be the first. I've already checked, and you have two spare artificials from the same bake that are in perfect condition; no flaws, sterile, and ready to go. Just name the day, and we will replace yours with a spare."

David thought of being out of work again. Seeing David's look, Doctor Proboscid added "David, there's nothing to worry about. This visit, the new surgery, your rehab, and any lost wages, they are all paid by the clinic's own insurance. Just as if it was a new car under warranty."

David had the surgery the following Wednesday morning, all went well and Doctor Proboscid met with David in recovery later in the day.

Stepping to David's bedside Doctor Proboscid asked, "Well how are you feeling David? A little groggy still?"

"Just a little" David replied.

Doctor Proboscid continued "We'll get you on your way in a few hours. You're in a leg restraint again, but just to protect the surgery scars. Rehab should go much faster this time, less muscle memory to restore. You come back next Wednesday, and we'll look at removing the leg restraint. For now, get some rest."

#

That evening in the Orthopedics clinic laboratory, Doctor Proboscid was analyzing the failed kneecap artificial. The recess in the artificial bone material (it looked like a dent) was easily seen now, without any special lenses. Doctor Proboscid placed the failed kneecap in a special microscope; think of it as an electron microscope but much better. Looking at the material away from the dent, Doctor Proboscid sees just what is expected. Under the microscope the artificial bone looks like tiny frothy soap bubbles bound together. These bubbles are uniformly random as deep into the artificial material as the instrument can see. Shifting focus to the edge of the dent, some sections of bubbles have collapsed causing jagged sections of seemingly popped bubbles. This explained the dent, without explaining the cause. Doctor Proboscid Looked at the center of the dent. This view was not the endless uniform bubbles as seen in the material outside the dent. Deep inside the center of the dent, there appeared to be a smudge; as though there was an unexplained concentration of material just beyond the microscopes range; too deep to be sure, but definitely a smudge at the center of the dent. For a different perspective Doctor Proboscid shifted the light spectrum viewed to the highest frequency range. Normally this view would catch an occasional random dull flash from within the network of filaments. Doctor Proboscid quickly saw a bright flash, appearing at the dent's center, this flash was rapidly followed by a second and a third flash before a pause came. Now this is not at all normal. Doctor Proboscid monitored the flashes for several minutes; the flashes repeated in a regular sequence with a much longer pause in between the sequences: two flashes, pause, three flashes, pause, five flashes, pause, seven flashes, pause, eleven flashes, long pause and then the sequence repeated.

"This cannot be coincidence" Doctor Proboscid quietly said aloud.

Doctor Proboscid gathered some images and short videos of the microscope details she had observed. To meet the requirements of reporting the artificial's failure, copies were sent to the research laboratory that invented the bone artificials process, and to the insurance company. Doctor Proboscid also sent copies directly to physics researchers whom Doctor Proboscid had worked with and respected. This helped to ease Doctor Proboscid's overwhelming curiosity.

Life in the Containment

"Again, this is your narrator Theodor. I need to ask you to take a step back. I have not been entirely honest with you up to this point. While I have described David's injuries, and he was injured; I also discussed Doctor Proboscid's groundbreaking work, and the Doctor is amazing; and we have discussed some of the laboratory work in the orthopedics clinic, the clinic is definitely amazing. There are parts of this tale that are just not true; this story has been humanized and anthropomorphized from what has really been happening on a completely alien world to our own. These are aliens that do have skeletons, but not made of calcium bone as we do; aliens that appear to live in and manage their lives in a world outside of our own. It's not at all clear that they have kneecaps, and the things they do for work are just as difficult to imagine. However, like us humans, these aliens are three dimensional and they live in space time; even if time for the aliens is perceived entirely differently from our own. Also, these aliens still have accidents and they have physicians to heal the injured and sick. The aliens are not named David, Jesse, and Doctor Proboscid; you will live your full lifetime before they can say their full name. For simplicity they are David, Jesse, and Doctor Proboscid from dark-world.

"Now let's go back in time in the alien dark-world and see what was happening within the kneecap containment inside Doctor Proboscid's laboratory just as the catalyzing event was started on Monday morning."

#

Inside the kneecap containment it began as nothing, then bang! The catalyst event. Energy and subatomic particles take form and begin moving away from the catalyst center. The size of the containment is beyond imagining. The newly formed universe of coalescing particles is positioned well toward the center of the containment. Hydrogen begins to build up in gravity wells and stars begin to form where the pressure is great enough to sustain fusion. Time inside the orthopedics kneecap containment's expanding universe does not at all match the passage of time in the alien orthopedics clinic. A day after the catalyst event in the dark-world clinic, energy and mass continue expanding from the catalyst origin, but time inside the containment is now passing on our celestial clock.

After three billion celestial years have passed inside the containment, visible matter in general has taken shape into filaments of mater. Galaxies form inside these filaments. Galaxies are birthing new stars, and super nova star destructions are berthing new galaxies. As this containment world has evolved, nearly ninety five percent of all matter and energy is dark matter and energy, which does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic spectrum (light). This leaves just five percent remaining of star stuff; normal celestial baryonic matter and electromagnetic energy that humans can see (we'll call this normal matter.) The matter we can see continues to be pressed and pulled into filaments channeled into place by vast expanses of dark matter and energy volumes within the kneecap containment. At the same time all is expanding away from the central catalyst event. Dark Matter provides the outer mold that will shape the material into a kneecap; the expanding normal matter filaments expand outward until they become permanently embedded in this outer dark matter kneecap shell.

Time passes quite differently in the universe inside the kneecap baking inside the containment and the alien dark-world outside. After three days in the kneecap containment, the kneecap's outer shell is solid, and it can be removed from the containment. While David's surgery was just getting underway in Dark-world, thirteen billion years have passed inside the kneecap and the ancestors to Homo sapiens have begun roaming the earth. By the time David's surgery is complete on Saturday afternoon dark-world time, while deep inside the kneecap, humans had begun crewed space travel beyond the solar system using solar wind-sail technology.

#

"Your narrator again -- Asking you to pause and consider the immense size of the alien world. The containment where the bone was baking is small enough to make an alien kneecap, but so large that all the universe seen from Sol system cannot even perceive that there is an end. The universe visible from Sol system is just a fraction of the material held deep within the kneecap. Back to the story.

There was a period of doubt among humans (a different story); but once humans committed to a collaborative future instead of hundreds of versions of disjoint dystopia, together they began to accelerate space travel with conviction. Humans thrived in their first five hundred thousand years. To their dismay, they have yet to confirm intelligent life exists beyond Sol system. In this same time, three potentially human life ending events have become known. First, in about four billion years, the sun Sol will grow to a red giant, expanding to absorb the Earth and likely Mars as well. Second, not long after the first catastrophe, the Andromeda galaxy will begin colliding with the Milky Way. While it's unlikely the Earth would be actively hit by something, any event that adjusts the planet's orbits around the sun may have catastrophic climate impact to Earth. Last of all, most all of the visible universe is expanding away from our Local Galaxy Group at accelerating speeds. This expansion will end in the 'Big Freeze' with no more stars being created and none to be seen, a cold end. While the big freeze is far, far into the future, it is a final end.

Humans would address each of these three catastrophes by investing nearly one hundred thousand years into research including dark matter and dark energy research and achieving startling breakthroughs along the way:

Creating dark matter and energy in space laboratories beyond Saturn.

Using dark matter/energy to create controllable gravitational waves to impact normal matter.

Using dark matter/energy to attenuate or amplify gravitational waves effect on normal matter.

Using dark matter/energy to locally control a spaceship's on-board gravity.

Expanding the scale of gravitation wave control to move asteroids, planets, and eventually stars.

Integrating gravitational fields from multiple sources to produce uniform gravitational fields of almost unlimited size.

The first four breakthroughs led to the creation of spaceships called dark ships, which used dark matter/energy for propulsion. The ship is immersed in a large gravitational field to propel it forward/backward, while still controlling the internal onboard gravity to stay a healthy one G. Later, after the gravitational field strength grew stronger, these ships would locally project a strong gravitational field in the direction of travel to repel stray matter in the ships transit path. This was vital to prevent the ships destruction, as the ship's speed could easily exceed the ship's sensor capability to warn of collisions. These dark ships would become faster and faster over time as ships stresses were better controlled; eventually speed topped out at eighty percent of light speed. This advancement of the dark ship's projected gravitational field was found to have other uses as well. The projected field was used to herd the asteroids of the Kuyper belt together into several small dwarf planets reducing stray matter inside the solar system. This significantly consolidated mining operations in asteroid belts in general. The projected field was also instrumental in terraforming Mars, by shuttling comets to deposit water on the surface and ultimately thickening the atmosphere. Newly created iron core moons were spun up and placed in Mars orbit to create a magnetosphere to protect Mars' surface from the sun's solar wind radiation. It was just a matter of time before someone suggested trading the aging sun, Sol, for a new one.

The dark ships discussed above travel within the solar system, but a larger class of generation ship was also created which could travel to distant stars. The generation ships were essentially a highly fabricated spaceship mounted to a large asteroid; with a full city of fabricated living space, multiple cargo holds, and mounted dark drives to propel the ship to near forty percent of light speed. As generation ships, there are thousands of families on board; and it will be their ancestors that arrive at the final destination. The crew is large enough and diverse enough to keep a stable population for thousands of years of travel, the time needed to reach neighboring stars and even galaxies. The asteroid material provides a protective shell, and ready resources to be mined. The cargo holds carry smaller dark ships to scout the space ahead. When needed, these smaller faster dark scout ships can stop in a local system to acquire new resources (mineral rich asteroids) to keep the host ship in repair while it continues in motion. These ships would begin inhabiting other worlds in the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies.

Before any complicated travel plans could be made humans settled on two uniform definitions for space and time. The term 'Known Space' was fixed at the sphere of space surrounding Sol at a radius of 15 mega-parsecs. Breakthroughs in sensors would allow discoveries beyond 15 mega-parsecs, but it was decided that a crisp boundary was more important than the limited visibility beyond gained. These discoveries continued as referenced to distance beyond known space. That brings us to measuring time. When you move fast enough for space travel speed to be measured as percentages of the speed of light, then when you arrive at your destination, less time has elapsed on board ship compared to Sol standard time. Time always needs to be reconciled with Sol standard time at journeys end though. You could make a rough estimate based on time traveled at estimated speeds, but accurately synchronizing the clock to Sol standard time involved finding and exactly measuring the periods of a dozen binary pulsars compared to one another. The intersection of enough Pulsar frequencies relative to one another can fix Sol standard time with surprising accuracy. So, with distance measured in mega-parsecs from Sol and time measured by the relative frequencies of various Pulsars, now humans could precisely coordinate events across galaxies.

With these collective breakthroughs Humans devised and implemented a plan to replace the sun with a younger version. The whole evolution, from locating an alternate younger slightly smaller star, sending ships to collect it and return, trading Sol for the younger star, and restoring stability, only took one hundred thousand years. The new Sol2 would last more than ten billion years, before it too would grow to a red giant. No evacuation required, and this could be repeated when needed.

Protecting Human inhabited systems as Andromeda galaxy collided with the Milky-Way was child's play in comparison, occasionally nudging large masses away from the many inhabited systems. Human exploration was in overdrive in this period, so there were several newly inhabited systems in the Milky Way and nearby Galaxies to protect.

Humans took a long time planning how to delay being trapped by the big freeze. The plan would take more than one hundred billion years before just starting to make a difference; but when finished about one thirtieth of all the normal matter in the known universe would be drawn in toward sol system to keep the skies full of stars as long as practical. The normal matter is channeled into filaments of star stuff between vast volumes of dark matter. Generation ships would travel a third of the way to the edge of then known space in all directions (a sphere of about five mega-parsecs in radius, about one twenty seventh the volume of the larger 'Known Space' sphere). The normal matter in this ten mega-parsec globe looks like a sponge that is mostly holes of dark matter. Once arriving at the five mega-parsec destination, groups of generation ships would band together with the onboard scout dark ships and generate immense gravitational fields large and strong enough to move whole galaxies; pushing all the normal matter of the sponge in toward Sol system one Galaxy at a time.

Each generation ship that initially left on this mission would spawn a new generation ship every thousand years or so. The second ship is built as an extension of the first by sending scout ships to collect needed resources while in transit. Initially building to house a growing population, but eventually building out a new generation ship to travel separately. Every eighth generation ship created would stop to inhabit a new system or become a stable space ports between galaxies. These new inhabited worlds and space ports in turn relayed communications in all directions and eventually built additional generation ships to follow the others. With this exponential growth of inhabited worlds and space stations, in less than one hundred thousand years there would be more inhabited worlds and space ports across a growing human inhabited space, than there were atoms on Earth in the year two thousand of the Common Era (about ten to the fiftieth power of atoms).

Ninety billion years after the first generation ships were set in motion from the Milky Way, the first Generation ships began to arrive at their five billion parsec travel destinations. Human space has now expanded five billion parsecs in every direction from Sol system. The numbers of generation ships now are beyond counting, and they begin moving Galaxies from the edge of human space toward Sol system. In another ten billion years this once five gigaparsec sponge of normal matter is slightly smaller and denser, and a notable gap of dark matter fully surrounds the sponge, and this gap is growing. Humans would cling to all the stars they could, to delay the big freeze.

On the edge of this sphere of human space, there was a last chance effort to make contact with other intelligent life in the universe beyond the human space. Using very deft handling of dark ship gravitation fields multiple x-ray binaries were orchestrated at the edge of human space. The x-ray emission jets from these systems were pivoted together to bounced up and down, directed in such a way that they would appear to powerful flash of x-rays beyond known space. Think of an arc of spotlights converging on a point in the clouds moving out beyond into the stars. Pulsars like the ones used to normalize time across human space, were now used to synchronize the flashing of dozens of x-ray binaries, crossing beams to maximize the output. These flashes were controlled to flash the prime numbers 2 through 11 (centuries to complete each flash) with a longer pause between groups of flashes, ending with a much longer pause after eleven is completed all is repeated. Just as the mad dash to steal the stars for future generations, would span generations, the act of messaging beyond known space would take generations as well. Should any message be returned, physicists and linguists were on hand with preplanned message sequences to build a language between civilizations that cannot see one another.

Journey Ahead

The narrator, Theodor, continues speaking within an ornate hall to the assembled human audience in formal attire. "I have just shared the short version of the events which have introduced humans to our alien friends. This has been the RedFishSevenSevenFour galaxy version of a story which has been told uncountable times through uncountable generations, only surpassed in the telling by the origin story itself. This story has evolved as it passed across the generations, but it has always been a story of hope; just as the origin story from an age which has been long forgotten was also a story of hope. That hope has stayed alive, and we carry it forward.

"Which brings us to our journey beginning today." Theodor said to those gathered and many others listening on video feeds. "We on local galaxy RedFishSevenSevenFour are beginning our transfer under dark ship power from the aging Universe Zero to a recent bake of a new replacement bone. This will be the fifteenth excursion of galaxies from Universe Zero to another containment world, to be named Universe Fifteen."

"Our dark-world alien hosts have provided a wormhole to enable our transport to Universe Fifteen, very similar to the communications wormhole which first appeared to answer our prime number call.

"As has become our custom during each universe transit to a new containment. The local version of alien discovery story was repeated, and now we celebrate Dr. Hortense Proboscid, our alien benefactor to whom we owe our very lives. For if she had not investigated our X-ray binary flashes, our universe would have long ago become a recycled mass; ending all life as we know it. Instead, our alien friends have given us humans a permanent lease on life.

"To the aliens, our stars and galaxies bound together by dark matter are their foundational element of matter; in the same way tiny atomic nuclei of Neutrons and Protons surrounded by an electron cloud are elemental units of matter in our universe. The aliens themselves are as large compared to our galaxy, as a human is compared to sub-atomic particles. For the dark matter aliens. all of the universe known to humans is little more than a speck of dust.

"The mission our galaxy embarks on today is to ensure a uniform distribution of filament matter during the alien matter 'Bake' process. We will be shaping our new universe even as we make it our new home. With our dark ship technology, we are far better at shaping a uniform distribution of normal matter filaments than our alien friends can by probing with dark matter volumes. With humans directing an even distribution of filament matter, the strength of the resulting alien material has been shown to be far stronger, creating a need for our services into the future."

"In our galaxy's excursion the Aliens have enabled the extraction by wormhole of four inhabited galaxies from Universe 0 to transit into Containment Universe 15. The combined task of these four galaxies, our galaxy is to establish a consistent normal matter formation for a new replacement leg bone containment for our alien hosts."

Lifting a glass, the narrator called out "Again by our custom, I give a toast in celebration of our alien benefactors?" bringing the audience to their feet. "Thank you doctor P!" and drank.

The attending audience repeated, much louder "Thank you doctor P!" and drank in turn.

End