Welcome back. The Transcendence journey continues.
Chapter 5 – Doubts
There are over two years since the twenty‑year‑long habitat project started. Processing the weekly progress reports from habitat construction has become a simple routine. The first montage showing the construction of the first building, courtesy of SEET and PARE120, is now played on all major TV stations. A simple, functional building with a common meeting room, a mixed laboratory, a first‑aid room, and the first crew quarters. But the headlines couldn’t stop paraphrasing Neil Armstrong:
“First structure for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
SEET’s attention is now on building the colony ships. Three smaller ships dedicated to first crews, mainly scientists, resupply, and backup or emergencies. The first ship has already been completed, and a flight test run is planned in a few days. And the first colony ship, the biggest ever built, will accommodate over one hundred thousand people and is planned to be ready just two years before the twenty‑year mark. As these are also the first ships built in the GODS1 and GODS2 shipyards, the progress falls directly under SEET’s governance.
Elara and her team, besides processing the periodical reports from Hestia, are working on the next phase for PARE120: CORE, Central Operational Relay Environment. Alongside habitat construction, a few PARE120 units were assigned to work with older PARE versions to build the Consensus Building, something SEET kept under wraps from the media. In this building, using the technology already delivered to Hestia, a more powerful system will run, connecting all active PARE units. The system will be autonomous in redistributing all PARE resources and adapting their code, optimizing the construction process. It will also have access to Earth’s systems, the internet, and GAIA. Once CORE is active, the data will be combined from all PARE units at once, rather than through over eighty weekly reports covering all other active PARE versions.
CORE was successfully tested multiple times using different sets of three hundred microbots running PARE120 code remotely. Their task was to build an ant colony, but each set operated under different variables and environmental limitations. This helped the team observe how they cooperate, how they adapt, and how tasks are distributed. All of these results were then checked again after activating CORE. The improvement was significant. Task distribution no longer needed time to be processed by each microbot; support was ready even before the need was identified by the microbots themselves.
Elara is checking, in her office, the data from the colony from the test of the last version of CORE — the one that will also be deployed. Dr. deMatisse knocks once on the open doorframe and comes in, carrying a good‑news vibe.
“Evening, Dr. Song.”
“Evening, Dr. deMatisse,” she replies without breaking her focus from the data on the displays. “Your voice tells me you have some good news. Excuse me for a second… last test data… I’m in the flow…”
“Sure. Not to worry. I’ll have some tea. You always have good tea in your office. GAIA, please prep the file HWP120R‑Y2W22/CB‑2,” he says, which is automatically translated by Elara’s mind as: Hestia Weekly PARE120 Report – Year 2, Week 22 / Consensus Building, Type 2, executive report.
“Done. Thank you for waiting,” Elara says, watching Dr. deMatisse come back with two cups of tea, visibly satisfied as he inhales the steam. He places a cup in front of her and takes a long sip from his own, almost burning his lips and tongue.
“Very good indeed!” he says, takes a comfortable seat, sips again, and continues, “GAIA, show the report, please.”
The monitors fill with data, images, and infrastructure details she hasn’t seen in previous reports — installation checks, system diagnostics — all marked with a “ready” status.
“As you can see, CB is ready for the upload. What’s the status on your end?”
“I just confirmed the latest test results, and everything is A‑OK. I have already informed my team, and I have emailed you the status reports. Upload compiling, packaging, and code preparation are now in progress. Tomorrow morning we’ll run the package verification test, and we’ll be ready to upload starting tomorrow afternoon.”
“Wonderful news, Dr. Song. Tomorrow afternoon it is. How does seventeen hundred hours sound? Right after the weekly PARE120 report.”
“Oh… tomorrow…”
“If you need more time…”
“It’s OK. Sorry! I was just thinking about the team’s reaction. They asked me today if I had any details, and I told them I would ask you after we completed the package verification.”
“Perfect. GAIA, in fifteen minutes make the announcement and activate the countdowns. Thank you, Dr. Song. This tea is really good! See you tomorrow.”
Before leaving, he turns at the door. “You have less than fifteen minutes before the team finds out from GAIA. Keep it up, Dr. Song.”
“GAIA, call the team. Five minutes. My office.”
The news about the upload happening so soon comes as no surprise. They either expected it, or they dug through unofficial information and saw it coming. Truth be told, if something is digital, there are very few chances for it to remain hidden or secret from them — not if they are really looking.
The upload and the CORE boot‑up come without any issues. Just one hour later, they received the first combined report. Many parts are similar to the one received an hour before the upload from PARE120, but with much more detail, as expected.
…
Another two years have passed since CORE went live. The second small ship was successfully test. Progress on Hestia has significantly improved, steadily decreasing the project’s duration, now to nineteen years and eight months instead of twenty years. The reports always arrive on the dot: same details, same precision, the same steady increase from one week to the next. Since CORE, the old reports about PARE collapse and decommissioning have disappeared, now consolidated under a “Resources Repurposing” section.
It’s Friday night, and Elara is casually checking CORE’s progress ratios. With the exception of the first two months, when progress varied week by week, the ratios have since remained almost identical across the board. Too similar — even for PARE120 precision. Elara ignores the growls from her stomach, so focused on preparing a few parameters for a new check that she misses the knocks at the door.
“Elara, you have your favorite niece at the door,” GAIA says. “You were just asking how she is doing. Well, you can ask her directly.”
“Really? Great. I needed a break anyway. Let her in.”
“Aunt Elara!” Alma shouts from the door and runs straight into the living room, sets the bag she is carrying on the table, then jumps into Elara’s arms. “Finally, I’m free. I finished all the exams. Now I can stay with you! I missed you so much!”
“Wait… exams?” Elara laughs. “You’re what now, thirteen? What exams?”
“Haven’t I told you? SEET High School, year four. But they told me to wait another year… something about being a child. What kind of math is this? Thirteen is a child and fourteen is… what? A teenager?” she grins.
“My little overachiever, you do know that these childhood years cannot be packed away for later.”
“Now you sound like those high‑school teachers. You know that? It doesn’t matter. I know what I’m doing.” Elara’s stomach growls louder and longer. “And that…” Alma continues, pointing to Elara’s stomach, “…that is exactly what Mom and I predicted. So please, have something to eat.”
She takes the bag and pushes it into Elara’s arms.
Elara accepts it without resistance. She knows she still has to buy groceries, and that Gorowitz food will always be better than what she cooks.
As always, Shai packed cutlery as well. Elara only needs to take the boxes out and eat. Meanwhile, Alma curiously studies the screens displaying the latest CORE report checks. The meal is exactly what Elara needs, and although distracted, the small talk — the stories about the incredible projects Alma completed despite her age — fills the room. Everything feels peaceful and warm, like home. A feeling she didn’t realize she had missed so much.
“Very good. Shai is such a good cook. Please thank her for me. Let me clean the casseroles.”
“Mama insisted not to. Just put them back in the bag. And Aunt Elara… the potato latkes were made by me.”
“Alma, this is great. Tell me — is there anything you cannot do when you put your mind to it?”
Alma shrugs, her red cheeks betraying her emotion, then hides in Elara’s arms.
“Aunt Elara, when can you take a few days off? It would be nice if we could go somewhere together. Mom and Dad already said it’s OK. Think about it, OK? I’m waiting for you. But for now, I have to go back. Still things to do at home.”
“I will, sweetie. I need a vacation too, you know. But for now, I’m a bit busy.”
“I know. I saw that.”
“Say what?”
“What you are busy with. But I need to go. Bye, Aunt Elara. I guess we won’t see each other for a while. Not at least until you fix the silence.”
Elara goes back to the data. Nothing seems wrong. The almost identical progress ratios are not a smoking gun.
Then she remembers what Alma said: “Not at least until you fix the silence.” She looks again at the data — and suddenly, everything starts to make sense.
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