Boldly, to Go

As far back as the 1860s, a physicist named James Maxwell, had proven that photons exert pressure. As she did her daily circuit, clockwise, round the habitat ring, Nicole wondered what he would make of her achievement. Scientists and aerospace engineers had toyed for decades with the notion of solar sails - a technology entirely dependent on the phenomenon Maxwell demonstrated - and here she was, about to be the farthest anyone had ever travelled from Earth, and all thanks to that discovery two centuries ago in a laboratory in Scotland.

Nicole suddenly feels overwhelmingly alone. Not lonely, just acutely aware that she is as far from another human as anyone has ever been. She did the isolation training and has developed a very effective set of coping techniques to deal with it, but this feels different - it’s not the isolation, or the loneliness bothering her, it’s the stark realisation that out here she is truly alone. If anything were to happen to her, even if it didn’t prevent her getting a message out, it would be two weeks before anyone heard it. She is entirely reliant on her own skills.

You don’t get to do a long-distance solo flight without first being able to prove a proficiency in a number of important disciplines, and even after being accepted onto the programme, you are then trained in another dozen or so roles. One of the first things Nicole did when the loneliness initially started to creep in, was to isolate a section of the ship’s computer to run an AI subroutine. She has subsequently installed her code on any device on the ship with the processing power to handle it, and has passed countless days’ worth of downtime on the ship, programming little quirks into each of her artificial companions. As a result of that, she can now have conversations with a variety of characters, anywhere she goes on the ship, and often chats with one or other of them while carrying out maintenance, or making food. She has hopes of publishing a thesis on AI, upon her return to Earth.

That return is by no means guaranteed. There is an astronomical number of things that can go wrong, which is partly why there is a human on board at all. And only one, to lower the potential risk of loss. Nicole is fully aware that the ship is constantly transmitting data back home, and that she is, at least to some degree, expendable. That said, in a sense, once today’s data reaches Earth in a couple of weeks, she will be immortal - up there with Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong. Even if she makes it back, the physical and mental toll of such a long solo mission, will curtail her life expectancy significantly, so every day is precious, and Nicole fills hers with as many projects as she can think of. She may have a shorter life than her peers, but she has determined to make it as extraordinary as she can.

"Morning, Coffee".

"I wish you'd give me a proper name".

"No you don't".

"No, I really don't".

"That was better though. I almost believed you".

"I aim to please".

"And that's a start, but I want you to..."

"Dramatically finish your sentences".

"Was that humour? or just algorithms pandering to what you've learned about me?"

"Is there a difference?"

"Touché".

"Coffee. White and two. Don't know why we even brought tea".

"Albert likes tea".

Nicole has always felt isolated. She's had plenty of friends, acquaintances, lovers even, and has seldom been alone, despite oftentimes having been lonely. It's not that she is introverted, though she has tended toward that pattern of behaviours in recent years, as a result of the isolation. She doesn't struggle to socialise, or to understand people. She enjoys being in company, and experiences genuine delight in engaging in activities with other people. Nicole's problem is that while she has a great many contemporaries, she has woefully few peers. Nicole is afflicted with Superintelligence.

The Wells Programme was exposed in 2023, by which time it was on its eighth generation. Nicole was 18 when the curtain fell, and had only ever socialised with her community, all of whom were superintelligent. She had believed until that point, that they were the only people in the world. She felt mentally stimulated by her carers and her fellow learners, but had always felt there must be something more. Being introduced to the real world, after the fall of the government, shattered Nicole's worldview. But learn that there were not forty-eight people in the world, but billions, was both terrifying and exciting. The limitless possibilities, and distractions set Nicole's brain alight with ideas. It came as a crushing, and rather unexpected blow, to find that the vast majority of these exciting new people, were complete idiots. Some were just objectively intellectually inferior to her - just simple biology. But the rest, even the more intelligent ones, were completely fixated on biases and belief systems. Closed-minded and conditioned; tribal and jingoistic.