Shayray LeMontez Stubbs III was not just the average farmer at Cosmolink-Concentrics Industries; he was their “Sacred Cow”. He practically invented the system of “Concentric Farming” that was rapidly putting the old monosurfaced, hollow-core farm planets to pasture. Shayray invented the concentric system while studying a bubble his son had blown with soap suds. He watched as the great transparent sphere of a bubble engulfed a smaller one.
He was amazed at the way the iridescent bands of colour undulated in a psychedelic frenzy on the surface of the bubbles. The pattern seemed to adapt itself, expanding, flowing and adjusting to the constant change in diameter; the surface of the bubble was never a true sphere but a delicate amoeba like membrane responding to the most infinitesimal changes in external forces and internal pressures exerting themselves upon the membrane.
He noted the effect gravity would impose on the membrane, causing the upper part of the bubble to thin and the lower regions to become heavier causing the bubble to rock like a cradle across the sky and rotate causing the rainbows of color prisms to migrate unpredictably.
ShayRay was fascinated when he saw how when the two bubbles collided it created an even smaller bubble inside one of the interior bubbles. He realized that the thin membrane of the transparent bubble had two surfaces, interior and exterior and the light permeating through the first, second and third bubble provided illumination for 6 different surfaces… if the two-sided membrane of a bubble could be likened to a pasture… but a highly specialized pasture that would emit light through it to a reverse side and to yet another and another level the yield of each surface, if it could be farmed… this would be astounding and it would revolutionize the farming industry!
He was amazed at the way the iridescent bands of colour undulated in a psychedelic frenzy on the surface of the bubbles. The pattern seemed to adapt itself, expanding, flowing and adjusting to the constant change in diameter; the surface of the bubble was never a true sphere but a delicate amoeba like membrane responding to the most infinitesimal changes in external forces and internal pressures exerting themselves upon the membrane.
He noted the effect gravity would impose on the membrane, causing the upper part of the bubble to thin and the lower regions to become heavier causing the bubble to rock like a cradle across the sky and rotate causing the rainbows of color prisms to migrate unpredictably.
He framed his proposal to C.C.I. only after exhaustive research and a great deal of speculation on the actual capabilities of Cosmolink-Concentrics Industries. The corporation had been resting upon its laurels of late and other companies were making amazing headways in the field of extraterrestrial agriculture. C.C.I. was actually sleeping on a massive repository of data it had collected over the past 2,000 years of its existence exploring the cosmos. Because it was the very first it had got a significant lead but that advantage was fast closing as other companies were gaining access to the same virgin resources and making collections of their own… collections of data that they were not apt to sit on for 2,000 years as the competition was getting hot. Humans were populating the cosmos at an unprecedented rate and after the last days of Old Earth a very important lesson had been learned and universally applied. This rule related to population density control; no vessel or planet was permitted to exceed a human population of more than 8.7 people per square mile or 1,713,381,480 people. The area of Old Earth was approximately 196,940,400 square miles and this figure was based on a study done in the early 21st century when Old Earths population has got to 6,840,507,000 people or 34.7 people per square mile. This figure represents a population that is roughly about one fourth of the Old Earths total surface area. The population density for mining satellites and farming colonies where the population varies, escalating only around harvest times, is typically kept a bit higher. Pleasure and recreation planets and satellites are permitted to exceed allowable levels depending on the nature of the venue but most resort planets are kept to population levels at 4.0 people per square mile or less.
When Shayray invented concentric farming the earth had ceased to be farmed for over 2000 years. Very few people actually remembered what it looked like since nearly all of its population had moved to elsewhere in the multiverse. Earth was nearly but not totally forgotten, mentioned vaguely in the news and then referred to as “Old-Earth” as if there were a new one.
It became inevitable that humans would have to leave Old-Earth after polluting it for centuries. In the end they had no choice, as plagues and other geologic and environmental cataclysms took their toll on the small fragile planet. But once the now infamous “Visitation Theory” had finally been substantiated there seemed no longer to be any hold that would keep anyone there… for thousands of years after the theory had been proved it remained an ironic manifesto for the colonization of the universe.
The plan actually involved opening fissures in the earth’s crust right down to the mantle to allow high pressured magma to escape covering the areas once occupied by large cities such as New York, Buenos Ares, Mexico City, Istanbul, Tokyo, Paris and London only to name a few… At year 3500 after the mass exodus of earth only two of the 10 megacities were ever built. A third megacity was partially constructed but by that time there was so little interest in the prospect of repopulating earth the enterprise was massively scaled down to the two and the third city was left in ruins then later rehabilitated as a research project to encourage the proliferation of some endangered Aeolian species. Ironically all of the ancient structures were ceremoniously returned to their former sites on Old Earth. Today, nearly 7,000 years later, they are still heavily visited by tourists curious about the legendary beauty and culture of Old Earth. The most frequent tours to Old Earth today include students on school field trips and college students looking for unique hiking and wilderness adventure. After 7,000 years virtually no physical traces are left of the nations of Old Earth such as were once called The United States of America, The United Kingdom, Nigeria, Mexico, France, or Saudi Arabia… they have all passed into dust and their once crime ridden and overpopulated urban centers have been reformed into gorgeous mountain ranges, rivers, forests and grasslands. After a tumultuous and violent journey, Old Earth is finally at peace…
Long before Darwin humans had imagined a grand evolutionary process to have taken place on earth molding their species into existence over the span of millions of years. The missing links in evolution had never been convincingly pieced together by paleontologists. It always looked as if some sort of laboratory experiment had been going on and humans just popped up in a nick of time… it seemed more likely that we were planted here than evolved as part of some slow monkey walk across the vastness of time. Archeologists discovered that the earth was actually much older than originally thought and that massive geologic tumults had re-built its crust many times over obliterating nearly all remains of the organisms who had existed before and the cultures they built. Theoretically, Rome rose and fell many times over but each time the earth destroyed itself or was destroyed by some catastrophic event all memory was obliterated from consciousness… There may have been some freak events where a few organisms managed to survive to tell of but not re-build the amazing world that had been destroyed. Scientists believed that this is where the fantastic ancient accounts of genesis came from, having been passed on through oral tradition by the small factions of humans who managed to survive. If the world was destroyed today and 1000 humans survived they would not have the technology to rebuild critical and highly specialized technology, to resume the manufacturing of computers and other technologies… and in the brevity of their time all recollection of those things would fall into myth to be carried on by future generations or be utterly forgotten… the earth would fall into darkness… a common theme as we now know… Through some rare anomalies of fate random fossils of long past versions of earth survived being cooked into a molten stew of re-genesis. So the fossils we were seeing as if stratified for posterity were actually random admixtures of primordial sauces not of the last Pliocene forest but of a similar one nearly 5 earths ago. When the next cataclysm was invoked by the planetists earth regeneration project fragments of the empire state building were mixed with ancient dust from many earths ago; strata that had remained hidden deep between the mantle and the surface concealing structures made by super-ancients that looked very similar to those which are common today. Hidden artifacts were found from metropolises that rivaled twentieth century New York and Tokyo but were blasted to bits billions of years before and sucked into molten mudflows. The organisms, humans or humanoids, that built them perished with them. This is when the “Visitation Theory” really gained momentum. The fact of the matter was that the discovery of similar artifacts displaying technology from cultures at the same relative point of development but separated by millions of years posed one hard question. Either the technology for dating artifacts was massively inaccurate or the earth had witnessed and forgot the growth and demise of human civilization innumerable times. One reason why this phenomenon had remained under the radar was because the physical remains were locked within the molten chunks of pyroclastic and massive lava flows billions of years old. The evidence had lain in marble, granite metamorphic and sedimentary beds farmed for centuries to build the pyramids in Egypt, The Lighthouse at Pharos, Persepolis, Mycenae, Timbuktu, Angkor Watt, Machu Picchu, Palenque, Hagia Sophia, The Vatican, Blenheim Palace and the neoclassical cluster of The Federal Triangle in Washington, D.C. In order to detect pieces of ancient buildings which had fused with the igneous crystals large sections of strata had to be analyzed. A scanning device which operated like an x-ray and cat-scan but with a planetary scope would be set to detect regular patterns of like elements and a tool that worked much like an x-ray spectrometer detected regular patterns of mass of similar composition. When scientist began to scan the earth’s crust with this device they were amazed to find whole worlds craftily hidden within the natural rock formations. These scans showed definite proportions such as length, width and height and would run for hundreds of linear feet on a precise axis. Because the facades of the buildings were fused to the lava they were virtually inseparable but lasers could reproduce the building theoretically based on the measurement of depth from a stationary point to the mummified building’s façade. Unfortunately, this research never substantiated the existence of the legendary world of Atlantis which was therefore written off as mere myth.
Even so this compelling archaeological discovery was not enough to draw the billions of descendants of earthlings back to what was once thought to be the motherland of the species. The Visitation Theory was at first nothing more than an obscure premise that humans were not indigenous to earth but had been visited there as well as to many other similar planets in a time before all recollection. The many catastrophic destructions of earth had broken the continuum of historical account but on other planets human cultures fortunate to have had enjoyed an unbroken evolution recalled the obscure planet and even efforts to repopulate it after each untimely demise. The evidence was incontrovertible! To these humans earth had always been seen as a temperamental and difficult planet and they were wholly unaware that it had been repopulated with humans after the last great cataclysm many millions of years ago having resolved not to send any more colonist’s there. They theorized that somehow a small number of humans survived the saga which had come to be called, “The Great Dying” and were able to wait out the destruction until they could live upon the surface again. When evidence of subterranean complexes had been discovered nearly ready to be recycled by the molten core of the earth the visitation theory was accepted as gospel. Furthermore, other humans were compelled to retrieve documents man millions of years old referencing regular communication with Old Earths inhabitants including images of the many, many regenerations of the planet, it’s architecture and culture. These collections, though vast, were virtually forgotten and in time were all gathered into one repository. The extraterrestrial humans who traced family connections to Old Earth produced images and artifacts preserved for ages. Some of their ancestors had narrowly escaped destruction prior to one of the planets many catastrophes. Many of them had left written accounts of Earths long ago forgotten. This was not then seen as a challenge to the premises of the great world religions, but served as a universal reminder that their doctrine was historically inaccurate and should therefore be humbly treated as a poetic account or fable. This common element of fallibility served to force the great religions to focus more on the philosophical intent of their respective gospels rather than the dogmatic application of faith based acceptance of what now were exposed as spurious events. It was a turning point in human history for earthlings who had spent the last 6,000 years fighting over religious differences that had been passionately but foolishly contrived into political warfare.
One of the greatest challenges to interstellar space travel once tachyonics was refined was food. Remote space colonies that attempted farming soon discovered that up to 80 percent of their resources were spent maintaining suitable farming conditions for deep space travel and up to 90 percent of the volume was spent on growing surfaces but this was still not enough to provide a yield that would support a large population aboard a colonial transport vessel. Farming colonies were established along most major routes so ships could replenish their supplies. The first farming colonies were artificial satellites in space consisting of a great flat field and an artificial atmosphere contained within a bubble of some kind.
One of the important technological innovations was developed when man discovered how to slow down the chemical reactions that released light. Imagine if the light given off by a match that rapidly burns out could be slowed down to one thousandth or more of its normal burning time. This technology was born of tachyon technology when scientists learned how to slow-down metabolism and other chemical processes. The obvious rewards were amazing. Fuels could be expended slowly allowing all of their energy to be utilized, refocused rather than wasted in a quick unfocused burn.
The first “Spheri-Farm”, as they came to be called, consisted of only two concentric spheres. Each sphere moved independently and in different directions; their rotations were timed to expose the three spheri-farm surfaces to direct and what came to be called harvested recandescent insolation or “HRI”. Because of the spherical shape of its surface only 45 percent of the outermost sphere could be directly reached by the sun’s rays at any given time. In order to get sunlight to the entirety of the outer sphere, the inner spheres and the underside of each sphere ShayRay deployed smaller satellites called, “white dwarfs” in deeper space in orbit around the spheri-farms beaming light onto its surfaces and onto mirrors transmitters that redirected the light onto the farmed surfaces. This system of light and mirrors was later replaced with a much more symbiotic system. But the technology developed to manufacture the hybrid white dwarves; suns that were actually over 10,000 times more diminutive than an actual white dwarf primarily for illumination and secondarily for heat evolved into an important feature of space farming. The white dwarves were a fully manufactured, ultra-miniature, degraded sun cooled to suit the unique needs of synthetic farming. The plasma gases of these miniature suns had been manipulated to create a cooler sun that burned with a more intense light that distributed unique spectrums of radiation that were found to be most advantageous for agrarian use. For thousands of years since humans began to explore the cosmos they had attempted the ultimate chemistry project, the creation of a sun. The first artificial suns were created from the harvested mass of dead solar systems ironically to revive other more desirable dead solar systems.
Whole planets were literally dragged across the cosmos, sold and mined and apportioned for the purposes of galactic revitalization. There was and remains fierce resistance to this practice which critics argue will result in a phenomenon known as “Collateral Warp-Displacement”.
Scientists theorized that at the time of the creation of the universe the planets and solar systems created a unified and balanced system of electromagnetic orbit and created a warped space footprint that integrated an harmonious tempest of motion.
By removing a single planet from the equation the divine balance of the cosmos would be upset. Scientists argued that although a solar system may have long expired it’s mass continued as an electromagnetic footprint in space and that moving planets or destroying them would upset the balance of the solar system causing it to degrade and quite possibly resulting in a catastrophic hurtling of the planets into the free space.
These planets might be caught in the magnetic field of a large and powerful solar system and absorbed into its matrix but the addition would upset the balance of existing planets which throve on predictable orbits that maintained the sensitive ecological balance of the planet. Or the planets might just become a super asteroid headed on a doomsday collision course at magnificent speeds with some unsuspecting planet. Other scientists argued that when a planet is removed from its orbit the other planets would adjust to the new condition, their orbits would be altered but in the case of a dead solar system this would not result in any catastrophic destruction of significant life forms. Whether the collateral damage or “domino effect” of a major change in electromagnetic fields due to the removal of a significant mass in orbit would cause the entire galaxy to crash was another story. Planets and suns were being created and destroyed all the time and the universe appeared to be able to handle it. Besides it would take the equivalent of trillions of light years for any real damage to reach a point that might be affected so the effect was considered to be negligible.
Whole planets were literally dragged across the cosmos, sold and mined and apportioned for the purposes of galactic revitalization. There was and remains fierce resistance to this practice which critics argue will result in a phenomenon known as “Collateral Warp-Displacement”.
Scientists theorized that at the time of the creation of the universe the planets and solar systems created a unified and balanced system of electromagnetic orbit and created a warped space footprint that integrated an harmonious tempest of motion.
By removing a single planet from the equation the divine balance of the cosmos would be upset. Scientists argued that although a solar system may have long expired it’s mass continued as an electromagnetic footprint in space and that moving planets or destroying them would upset the balance of the solar system causing it to degrade and quite possibly resulting in a catastrophic hurtling of the planets into the free space.
These planets might be caught in the magnetic field of a large and powerful solar system and absorbed into its matrix but the addition would upset the balance of existing planets which throve on predictable orbits that maintained the sensitive ecological balance of the planet. Or the planets might just become a super asteroid headed on a doomsday collision course at magnificent speeds with some unsuspecting planet. Other scientists argued that when a planet is removed from its orbit the other planets would adjust to the new condition, their orbits would be altered but in the case of a dead solar system this would not result in any catastrophic destruction of significant life forms. Whether the collateral damage or “domino effect” of a major change in electromagnetic fields due to the removal of a significant mass in orbit would cause the entire galaxy to crash was another story. Planets and suns were being created and destroyed all the time and the universe appeared to be able to handle it. Besides it would take the equivalent of trillions of light years for any real damage to reach a point that might be affected so the effect was considered to be negligible.
The gasses and plasma required to fire-up a new star were conveniently stolen from black holes that were literally “tricked” into ejecting their primordial plasmas through a wormhole stabilized only long enough to sustain the sufficient transfer of matter before collapsing and closing the ominous portal again.
These experiments led to the discovery of new elements and particles that operated within completely different laws than the standard elements humans had come to learn in chemistry. Again, this practise was fraught with fierce controversy as many scientists predicted that as in the removal of a significant mass from a solar system would have collateral effects on the whole of the galaxy, the arbitrary creation of mass would also pejoratively affect the system.
These scientists believed that the cosmos operated in a time-lapse order wherein suns and planets were scheduled to die and explode and that these permutations were absorbed over time so that he cosmos could accommodate the alterations. They argued that the cosmos was not designed to accommodate radical permutations such as the arbitrary creation of a sun especially from matter that had not figured into the cosmic equation. The overall matrix must have time to adjust whereas the creation of ten demi-suns practically instantaneously and in multiple locations within the same galaxy would radically alter the orbits and cosmic symmetry of other heavenly bodies causing havoc, galactic and dimensional destruction.
These experiments led to the discovery of new elements and particles that operated within completely different laws than the standard elements humans had come to learn in chemistry. Again, this practise was fraught with fierce controversy as many scientists predicted that as in the removal of a significant mass from a solar system would have collateral effects on the whole of the galaxy, the arbitrary creation of mass would also pejoratively affect the system.
These scientists believed that the cosmos operated in a time-lapse order wherein suns and planets were scheduled to die and explode and that these permutations were absorbed over time so that he cosmos could accommodate the alterations. They argued that the cosmos was not designed to accommodate radical permutations such as the arbitrary creation of a sun especially from matter that had not figured into the cosmic equation. The overall matrix must have time to adjust whereas the creation of ten demi-suns practically instantaneously and in multiple locations within the same galaxy would radically alter the orbits and cosmic symmetry of other heavenly bodies causing havoc, galactic and dimensional destruction.
The very first artificial farms were enormous octagonal fields connected by transit highways in a massive array matrix. These matrices were slightly bent to match the curvature of orbit and to assure that each array received 90° the advantage of these fields was that they could be positioned to remain constantly in daylight increasing the growing time. Since the interstellar colonies depended upon the farms for sustenance the singular and elaborate expense of fabricating and atmosphere suitable for growing was never an issue to the farming corporations… they simply passed the expense on the consumer who had no other choice but to pay or starve… while traversing the infinite reaches of space. Interstellar colonization literally saved capitalism because it opened a new frontier for continual economic growth and manifest destiny delaying the rethinking of traditional Keynesian Economics. The arbitrary dynamics of the supply and demand curve so intimately tailored the development of these early colonies that progressive socioeconomic theories that seemed so unavoidable during the last days of human habitation of the overpopulated, and overdeveloped Earth fell into obsolescence. The next generation of space-farms manifested themselves as hollow orbs… satellites set in orbit around a sun with the machinery to sustain an artificial atmosphere inside the shell. Although fuel sources were generally abundant this type of farming, including the flat array farms consumed huge amounts of fuel and other resources required to maintain an artificial atmosphere. The original models actually used a much refined form of the primitive nuclear technology that had been discovered in the twentieth century by humans. When energy and mechanical systems that produced radioactive waste were finally banned in all sectors of the multiverse these dinosaurs vanished. For many millennia there was a romantic revival of the ancient agrarian arts but planets, planetoids, asteroids, and satellites suitable for farming always had to compete with the sprawl of populations of humans and other humanoids. Many planets had been wiped clean of human sprawl and large urban areas were restricted to a few points where mega-cities rose from the planet’s surface clear beyond the atmosphere and into space… allowing the planet to revert back to nature. These urban planning trends were first devised in the mid twentieth century of Old-Earth by what were called “Hippies” and what were actually preservationists who saw the imminent demise of the planet long before it was acknowledged by the world socioeconomic powers.
One of the revolutionary features of the spheri-farm was that it was designed to generate its own electromagnetic fields and the flux was sufficient to simulate a density and gravity similar to that of the earth. The agrarian and residential sectors of the complex were designed to produce greenhouse gases, methane, hydrogen, carbon, water vapor including other compounds and elements necessary to sustain an atmosphere through natural organic and symbiotic processes. The spheri-farm was completely sustainable producing its own energy and manufacturing its own atmosphere with minimal artificial backup systems. One of the initial challenges to the space farms was the ability to import all of the necessary bacteria and microbes necessary for successful farming. It had long been discovered that antiseptic farming had a low yield, the size of the crops was smaller and the shelf-life shorter once it had been exposed to general bacteria and microbes.
Some of the first farms included implementation of a series of intermediate mirror arrays placed in orbit just above and below the sphere-farm layers to direct light to their surfaces. This method was abandoned in lieu of the creation of artificial dwarf suns manipulated to give cooler and more brilliant light in spectrums tailored specifically for the type of crops that were being grown or organisms that were being farmed. Eventually the space farms included massive herds of cattle, fish, fowl and other commodities utilized for food by humans. But the sphere-farms quickly gained momentum because they maximized the amount of area that could be farmed within a general area and also functioned like a demi-planet rather than a spaceship.
Shay Ray invented a clear, malleable but firm gelatinous product that could be made rigid with a very hard and durable plastic frame, a product developed to have the tensile and compressive strength of steel and reworked to have a powerful crystalline structure that was woven to resist brittleness and lateral fracture. The gelatin was filled with photogenerative microbes similar to algae discovered in rocks on an asteroid that was being mined for ore. The algae grew in geode-like clusters in the hollow of porous rocks producing their own light feeding off of the mineral content of the boulder until they had eaten completely through having digested the rock. The intense light given off by the microbes during their active digestion was utilized to aid photosynthesis so both the outer and underside of the sphere could be farmed without the loss of any light. The gelatinous plant beds fit together like puzzles around the circumference of the sphere and they contained the roots which were nourished by a clear liquid that was pumped throughout the plant beds. The plants were able to send their shoots through the gelatin sealing the nutrient layer in with the roots. The gelatin was engineered to recognize the difference in cell structure between a root and a shoot thereby containing the growth. The illumination provided by the microbes was not sufficient to provide light and heat to the plant life so the demi-suns were employed to provide the required insolation, heat and spectral nourishment. The core of the spheri-farm was a huge machine designed to maintain gravity and favorable atmospheric conditions throughout the sphere and living quarters for the agrarian engineers was typically provided on the surface of the innermost sphere or on a rotating shell-level between the agro-shells.
ShayRay had been working on an even more complex project. The creation of dual-farmed surfaces on each of the concentric shells meant that the outer layer would experience a positive gravitational effect with the farmers being pulled down to its surface by an artificially induced gravitational field at the core of the spheres. But ShayRay had begun to imagine creating a reverse-gravity which would only affect the underside of the shell so that farmers could walk essentially upside down but experience positive gravity as if they were inverted on the surface. In the past magnetic boots had proven too hazardous. Besides the new gelatinous technology did not have sufficient metal to make the boots work. ShayRay played with the idea of inducing an artificial gravitational field from outside the shells but saw that the effect would only neutralize both fields unless the reverse gravitational flux was designed to be effective only with specific materials. So he began to imagine a thin mesh woven into the underside of the farming terrain that when induced would exert a magnetic attraction applicable to a specific element and one that would not neutralize the surface. He was onto something big but needed to pull together his best researchers and materials specialists to devise a strategy. C.C. I. had thousands of undocumented new elements and compounds in its central repository most of which had lain un-researched due to a lack of interest. This meant that although these materials could be easily identified by name virtually nothing was known about their properties so it was as if they had never have been discovered. When ShayRay pulled up the inventory he discovered that the list was even more extensive than he had feared. Each element had merely been given a number; there was not even an atomic or molecular breakdown to give him an inkling of the nature of each piece of matter. With his current staff taking on each item it would take something like 300 years to research and catalogue the repository. Perhaps then, he needed a machine to do the clinical work rather than a human staff.
ShayRay pulled up the inventory from a remote location to verify the extent of the repository with the intention of dividing it up and assigning the portions to his staff. Immediately after entering the security codes the screen morphed into a giant logo that read, “COSMOLINK+CONCENTRIC INDUSTRIES” in bright orange upon a brilliant titanium white ground. The script led on to include a caption that got larger and larger upon the screen until it covered the screen in orange, “Defining The Way You Farm”. A brief flash of the C.E.O and the board of directors imaged and faded into a directory saying simply, “Inventory of Extraterrestrial Matter”.
TO BE CONTINUED…
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