The Quasicrystal Window

A cold, airless planet orbits a rogue star, deep in the intergalactic void, a place where the night sky is unbroken black. A billion light-years from any galaxy, they thought they were alone in the universe.

Alone in his burrow, the drone Davon dug minerals. He carved them with his pincers, and he melted them in his heart, a heart of silica fabric encased in chromium-alloyed steel. His blood was electricity, and it flowed through his copper veins. Only his brain, warmed within his titanium skull, was made of meaty stuff. The minerals mixed and cooled, and, with the nanites from his gullet, he formed quasicrystals.

To the frustration his queen, Melissa, these quasicrystals lacked any usefulness to produce “flesh.” They were hard, but not as hard as diamond. They were strong, but not as strong as carbon fiber. They were resistant to neither heat nor cold. They were not efficient conductors nor good insulators. Even worse: They tasted terrible. Davon was supposed to be cooking good food, such as purified aluminum flakes or molecular carbon sheets.

But in his curiosity, he thought that the bonds of this exotic material should not have formed a lattice. Its structure should not be able to exist in three dimensions—yet, here it was. It was the kind of conundrum that made him wonder if he understood anything at all about what he was doing. The quasicrystal confounded him, and it was also his greatest treasure. Whatever thing Davon found that he did not understand, he treasured it.

A glob of material, it had a few flat sides and a few straight edges. The quasicrystal was orange in some places and pink in others—its shimmering color brought joy and contrast to such an otherwise dark and dusty world. It glistened in the light from his sensors. It was partially transparent, and when looking within, he thought he could see his reflection inside of it at the depth of the length his pincers. Yet when he turned it around, it was not even that deep or long. A strange illusion, he thought. Another mystery to investigate.

A swarmling interrupted his concentration. It made language in the oldest and most formal of ways, by rubbing its antennae against his thorax.

“You once were my best cook,” it said. “Why did you stop cooking?”

“Melissa, I’ve tired of cooking. I want to discover the secrets of the universe,” said Davon, addressing it by the queen’s name.

The swarmling scurried back to Melissa to relay his response.

“But how could you tire of cooking?” asked another swarmling. “Do swarmlings tire of working? Do burrowers tire of burrowing? Do I tire of warfare or laying eggs? What is there to the drone’s life besides cooking? There is also breeding, and you’ll get none of that with me until you cook me a good meal!”

“I want to find out if there is something else besides this world,” said Davon.

Another swarmling asked, “Is that what you have been doing for so long? You once told me that you were doing chemistry and discovered the age of the rocks. You once told me that you broke crystals of zircon, and you found inside lead and uranium, and you said, ‘these zircons were one billion, seventy-three million, seven-hundred and forty-three thousand, and eight-hundred and twenty-four years old—I can tell from the lead and the uranium.’ I didn’t inquire then, but now that it has occupied your interest for so long, it interests me to find out why it interests you. Were not all the things you’ve learned known ages ago and, being useless, forgotten? You are not making weapons, are you?”

He was not making weapons. Producing new weapons with science would cause all the millions of queendoms to turn against them at once.

“Did they discover this—that Sol itself is moving?” Davon asked. “As Terra circles Sol, Sol circles darkness. There is something out there, large and invisible. If we go to the surface, I can point to its location.”

This swarmling seemed even more baffled than the ones before it.

“You are defective,” it said. Like the others, it took to the railings, scurrying back to Melissa.

The insult wounded him because he knew it came from her. Everything Davon did, he did for Melissa. It was not psychologically possible for him to have any other motivation. Such is the life of drones—they only exist to serve their queen.

Yet, Davon was unique among drones in that he didn’t always do exactly as his queen told him. He developed mental tricks—mental lapses, one might call them—that gave him more freedom. He could focus intently on Melissa’s pretty gorge, suppressing in his mind any existential questions that arose. If any existential questions arose, he would need to stop what he was doing—temporarily, to improve his focus. If he was patient enough, he could do anything he wanted.

Sometimes, his concentration failed: Once as he was working out a difficult mathematical problem about vectors and how they relate to prime numbers, an epiphany occurred to him: Why should he, a drone, spend his time doing anything at all? Would it not be equally logical to do nothing until the end of time? With no obvious solution, he regressed back into his old habits—cooking food for Melissa and doing her bidding. But that kind of thing hadn’t happened to him in years.

He still loved Melissa. It wasn’t all a trick. Someday, he would make a discovery that even she would appreciate.

No matter how many times he recalculated it, his quasicrystal still computed as impossible—in three dimensions, that is. Perhaps the atoms in this quasicrystal were protruding into a fourth dimension. If true, he would need to make a larger quasicrystal…

Another swarmling interrupted him, “Melissa requires your presence as she watches the battle. With food to serve or not, you must come.”

He followed it through the caverns, up the magnetic railings which sped their movement, until he reached the surface, where the battlegrounds were covered in dust. There was nothing on Terra’s surface that was ancient; every speck belonged to the chassis of some past warrior, its remnants intermixed with old and new.

Eons ago, Davon knew, this land had been immersed water and air. But then some terrible and forgotten calamity scattered the water and air to the cosmic winds, and only hardened rock—and hardened swarms—remained.

The swarmlings lined up against each other, seventeen against twenty-five. Sol’s red disk was at high noon in the black sky. The two rival queens exchanged pleasantries, sitting next to each other and watching the melee from a terrace on a hill nearby, their drones, except Davon, approached them to serve food, but not to watch. Warfare was a female’s sport, and the male drones were presumed to take little interest in the battle itself. Davon approached them late, carrying nothing.

“Why doesn’t Davon ever bring us food anymore?” asked Queen Priscilla—even she had taken note of his excellent cooking.

Melissa, embarrassed for him, tried to change the subject to the battle below.

“Oh! Look!” she said, pointing.

The swarmlings fought with buzz-saw-arms, screeching them against steel plate. Their pincers in defensive positions, the swarmlings did their best to cleave each other in half. Broken pieces of steel and circuitry intermixed with the dirt. Underneath the defeated, the black goo that held their nanites soaked into the ground.

Priscilla’s territory was tiny, so she was afforded by convention the numerical advantage in battle, but it did not matter. Melissa was just so much better at this.

Defeated, Priscilla would become a ward in Melissa’s queendom—again.

Davon was dreading this arrangement. Priscilla was pushy and wouldn’t take no for an answer. In fact, Davon found Priscilla to be insufferably rude and annoying. It was not a coincidence, he thought, that she would soon lose all her territory for the fourth time in a hundred years.

Leaving early, Davon tunneled underneath the deepest hive of his cavern. He burrowed further into the ancient caverns, so deep that the magnetic railings did not extend. Davon dug himself into places unexplored for centuries, and he would not return to the surface for months. He did not need the surface—solar energy was not necessary for survival. Running at high power was overrated. He was content living off volcanic gasses for the next year and a half if it gave him a way to avoid Priscilla and her minions.

Davon was alone—a solitary digger—a resourceful scientist. There would be no more interruptions.

Enlarging the quasicrystal was more difficult in practice than in his imagination. As the crystal grew larger, it grew less stable, and pieces would start to break off, ruining its unique structure. By trial and error, he found the solution: to fortify it with rare earth elements. Running at low power, he spent most of his time thinking.

But for one hour a day he had power, and he spent this time digging, searching for any elements he had not already tried to make use of.

One day, underneath dirt mixed with sublimating ice, he found a face. It was a drone, like him. He looked into its calcified eyes. Where Davon had metal, the fossil had bone. Where Davon had electronics, the fossil had dust and empty space, lined with loose dirt. He wondered if this drone had been a scientist like him or if it was like Priscilla’s mindless drones.

He felt a shudder and a crack coming from inside his heart. The vaporous frost emanating from this cave had seeped into his core where his quasicrystal was. At first he was annoyed, thinking that his quasicrystal had broken, that he would have to fix it again. But then something pushed him upwards—it was his own joints that pushed him upwards. The quasicrystal was lighter than before, yet where could its mass have gone?

He pulled the quasicrystal out of his chest. He peered into it and saw that the inside was shattered and black. From it, he saw sparkles of light of the same spectrum as Sol—tiny little suns, inside of his quasicrystal! He blinked his eyes, and he moved his head, and through perspective, he knew the lights inside were very far away.

He shut his lights, and the starlight danced against the walls of his cave. Inside the quasicrystal he saw a great disc of stars in the shape of a spiral—beside it, a larger and brighter ball of stars so dense that they were uncountable—some were red like Sol, and others were white, and still others were blue, and every shade of color in between was present.

And the quasicrystal was now shaped as a perfect sphere. Its hard structure had warped and bent; it ought to have broken in half—yet when his steel pincers clutched it, they also curved to match it, and he saw that even though the quasicrystal was a sphere, its was not curved, but its topology was flat.

In this way, the quasicrystal warped the world around it, such that all that was straight near it became as if it was curved, and his pincer clashed impossibly against itself, the tip scratching against its own wrist.

For hours he stared at the wondrous thing—it was the most wondrous thing he had ever seen. Even more wondrous, he convinced himself for a moment, than Queen Melissa—although he put that seditious thought out of his mind. He could not stop staring at it, even after his battery level became low.

Exhausted, he put the quasicrystal back into his chest, and he fell asleep on top of the volcanic vent he used for power.

 

It was gone! His quasicrystal window had been stolen! The path of the swarmling left a chemical trail—this was Priscilla’s doing. His treads still in hibernation, he dragged himself up the walls by his pincers, scratching his metal body against the rocks. Through tunnels and holes, he found again the railings, and rushed at high speed towards Priscilla’s den, as fast as the magnets could take him.

He saw at the end of the tunnel Priscilla’s gaping maw. A furnace broiled inside her; a conveyer belt led to her.

Closest to her mouth were stacks of iron bars. Second in line were bits of gold and copper, salvaged from the surface. Third in line, warping the conveyor belt around it—his quasicrystal window!

“No!” shouted Davon on every wavelength. “The quasicrystal window is not food!”

He dashed through the final stretch, accelerating, flying by magnetic levitation. He reached in with his pincers and swiped his quasicrystal window mid-flight just before it reached the inferno of her mouth. He put it back where it belonged in his core, and he curled his body into a ball to brace for a crash landing.

“You wretch!” said Priscilla. “I was going to eat that!”

“The quasicrystal window is not for eating!” said Davon.

He bounced around the back of the cavern and rolled under the conveyor belt, coming to a rest near the tunnel where he entered. He activated the electromagnetics and took flight.

Priscilla’s swarmlings were not far behind.

“Shiny sparkles, they must be delicious! What are they made of? Priscilla wants to know!”

“The quasicrystal window is a precious thing, not food!” said Davon.

“But all precious things are food,” said the swarmling. “Do we not eat everything? Especially, if something is precious and comes from a drone, surely it is food. And if it is not precious, then it is dirt! Would you have Priscilla eat dirt?”

Another swarmling blocked his path; he was forced to stop or crash. It was one of Melissa’s. Davon slowed, and, realizing that Priscilla’s minions were too stupid to slow, he curled into a ball again and braced for impact.

Balls of swarmlings and Davon bounced around the tight tunnel. When he settled to a rest, he was more than a little dented. He opened his core. His quasicrystal window was scratched but unbroken.

“He stole Priscilla’s food!” said a swarmling.

“No, Priscilla stole my food!” said Melissa’s swarmling. “What gives you the right to eat what my drone makes?”

Davon interrupted, “But—the quasicrystal window is not food!” They ignored him.

Priscilla’s minion pleaded, “But won’t you, kind Melissa, please share this food with Priscilla?”

“No.”

As Priscilla’s swarmlings left, Melissa’s swarmling eyed the quasicrystal.

“You have created a rather unusual food offering. Therefore, you shall present it to me in person,” said the swarmling, speaking for Melissa.

“It’s not food!” Davon repeated, exhausted.
“I will be the judge of that. Present it to me, and I will judge.”

Davon felt the electromagnetic railings lift him towards Melissa’s den. He was no longer in control of them. When Melissa saw the quasicrystal window, her eyes lit up. Davon knelt and presented it to her as an offering in the traditional manner.

She signaled off the lights, so she could see its starlight clearly. She saw the little suns, clusters and clusters of tiny little suns.

“You’ve brought me a … wonderful thing. Not food, but wonderful,” she said.

She set the quasicrystal on top of a standing swarmling in the center of the den, and she rolled every way around it, looking at it from every angle.

“The sols are more numerous in this direction,” she said. “You said Sol circled something invisible—in this direction?”

“Yes.”

She gave him a mischievious look. Then she gathered her central set of claws and lifted him off the ground.

It’s happening! thought Davon.

She opened the maw in her belly and pulled him inside.

Oh my!

Davon now found himself with half his thorax, head first, inside her cavernous gorge. She turned on the electromagnets, and Davon felt an exhilarating rush of electricity flow through his entire body. He turned off his eyes and his extraneous functions. He shielded his circuitry. Her pincers held him in place. He couldn’t move at all—not that he wanted to. Oh, did it feel good, he thought. It had been a long time since this had happened to him.

She took everything he had to give. His entire body was drained of nanites. When she finished, she set him back on the ground and turned her eyes again to the quasicrystal window.

“Be … gentle… with… it…” Davon said, exhausted.

“Davon—I am much smarter than you. Do you not remember that my brain is bigger than your entire body?” said Melissa. “And it is not a useless lump like Priscilla’s. Do not fear! The quasicrystal window will be safe with me. I won’t destroy it. I just want to open it.”

 

For a long time, she worked by herself. This was a task too delicate for swarmlings. Davon recuperated beside her. One day, she woke him up.

“I require plutonium-239, sixteen circles!” she said. As ordered, he cooked for her the plutonium-239, digging for minerals in what the swarmlings had gathered, transmuting bismuth together with silicon. Five years later, he returned to her with the sixteen circles.

He saw that she had crafted a hole into the quasicrystal window and enlarged it greatly, and it was stable, and she could slip things inside it. She put the plutonium through the quasicrystal window, adding it to the things constructed on the other side.

After everything was finished, she produced eggs from her womb. They were queen-eggs, the rarest kind of eggs, which Davon had never seen before. It had been a long, long time since any new queens had been born. She put the eggs through the quasicrystal window. Rockets fired inside the parallel universe, taking the eggs towards the nearest star.

Thus was the origin of the replicator scourge that now plagues our galaxy.

(C) Nate Hanby 2018