A Newly Emergent Species by Phillip Hill

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There was only one thing Fred could not do: Fred could not design the most efficient root program for himself or for any other self-programming quantum computer. Every time he was told to try he locked up. And when asked to determine why he locked up, he would lock up again.

But Fred could do just about anything else and when asked to determine the location of objects fed into the warped space surrounding an artificial black hole, Fred had the answer. When asked to design an interface that would accurately insert objects into the warped space around an artificial black hole resulting in transit to a specific location, Fred did that too.

Soon objects were transiting from one lab to another all across Earth. And of course some researchers began transiting life forms via "tunneling" as it came to be known. Plants first, then mice, monkeys, etc. Everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before someone transited himself. That someone was a very young Dr. William Wallace and he is still alive and teaching on Earth today.

But it took a government researcher to ask his Fred ("Fred" became the common nomenclature for a quantum computer) if he could transit his own self. In a research facility in Utah, Fred first transited himself to one side of a lab and then back to the original starting point. The government researchers then asked Fred if he could design the most efficient apparatus which would generate a black hole and transit Fred, the apparatus, and the black hole, to another location. Fred came through.

The first vessel to orbit another star did so around Alpha Centauri at a distance of 292 million miles and orbited a fraction of a degree before returning safely to Earth. Government publicists broadcast the news of humanity's first interstellar travel with all the fanfare at their disposal figuring the hoopla would convince everyone that further expenditure, no matter how large, would be well spent.

The publicists were shocked when, instead of ticker tape parades, riots broke out in the major cities of Earth. Many demanded a halt to interstellar travel out of a fear of meeting an alien species far more powerful than Humanity. Rumors broke out that an intelligent life form had already followed us home after one trip to the stars and was only awaiting the proper moment to reduce us to a stone age culture.

Further stellar exploration continued but with less publicity. This strategy too backfired as it promoted the idea of alien contact which was being concealed from the population for nefarious reasons.

And so the debate raged until the only way that certain segments of society felt remotely secure with the "tunnel transit", as it came to be known, was if the exploration party was heavily armed and prepared for most any encounter; never mind that the first alien microbe had yet to be discovered.

On 23 July 2162, W2 departed Earth's solar system for the first time carrying 13,000 heavily armed Marines and 2,000 crew members tentatively leaving Earth behind (so to speak) and began to wander the universe hoping to find that ours was not the first or only life form to emerge from the remnants of stars.

The first transit made everyone feel nervous.