The Medusa Chronicles, "Encounter In the Deep," 1.6-7

This will be the last fast-tracked Medusa Chronicles post. I'll get to the rest of the novel eventually in the normal queue. So far it hasn't exactly thrilled me, but if this first chapter has an exciting surprise ending that could turn it around. We still haven't seen anything to justify the title "encounter in the deep," so that shoe could drop pretty spectacularly.

Maybe the ship runs into a renegade AI that's been hiding in the sea and decides it can't pass up this opportunity to take the President hostage? That would definitely fit the themes that were foreshadowed at the end of the original story and played with in the previous subchapters. Or maybe those Jupiter jellyfish were much smarter than anyone realized, and a spaceship of their own is about to make a water landing nearby? Could be anything. As long as it isn't Falcon having to put up with yet another asshole from his past, I'll look forward to it.

1.6
​

This chapter is very short and very clumsy. It's basically all just one long block shoehorned exposition. The authors tried to pass it off as an in-universe presentation, but the way it's executed is very, very "as you all know."

Basically, Falcon comes back to the Jules Verne room and listens to the last chunk of Springer the Pluto Guy's speech. Falcon is irritated that no one seems to have noticed that he left the room and came back ten minutes later, and that the President herself would rather watch this buffoon jack off behind a podium than pay attention to the guy who discovered alien life. Falcon knows that this is unreasonable of him (it's not like anyone in the audience would have had reason to look at the door and therefore have a chance of noticing), but he still feels resentful. This is the only thing that happens in this chapter besides exposition, so I'm making note of it. Anyway, the long and short of Springer's exposition in bullet point form:

• The event that happened instead of the Apollo 1 mishap ITTL is called the Icarus Incident. A quickly repurposed Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Vostok ship were both launched to prevent some type of disaster. It's not clear what, but it sounds like there might have been an asteroid that was going to hit Earth or something.

• The mission succeeded, but the Apollo ship didn't have enough air to make it back to Earth afterward. Grandpa Seth Springer died a hero's death in space.

• American and Soviet cooperation having saved the world from an uncaring force of nature had positive effects on the political climate. Robert Kennedy didn't get shot, and lived to crush Richard Nixon at the polls with a dovish platform.

• Fear of more spaceborne disasters, and a realization that if the asteroid had come even a few years earlier mankind would have been defenceless against it, led to a massive increase in space exploration, with first and second world agencies largely cooperating rather than competing.

• Resources discovered in space, along with more efficient exploitation of the oceans using repurposed space technology, gave TTL an advantage in dealing with climate change when it hit in the early 21st century.

• The general man-versus-nature zeitgeist resulted in the gradual merging of the American and Soviet spheres of influence into a world government. No word on whether capitalism and/or communism in their twentieth century forms have come to dominate the world economy.
  
  

I don't know how much of this was hinted at in the original Arthur C. Clarke short story, but I assume that this material was at least expanded considerably here. It's decent enough, as techno-optimist alternate histories go. Generic, but decent.

...

It kind of stings that back in the mid twentieth century, when the Clarkes and Roddenberries first started their careers, these sorts of timelines were being written as possible futures. With how those crucial decades of history actually did go, and the situation we have on our hands right now, they read like indictments. We could have done this. We should have done this. I won't comment on whether a killer asteroid would have been enough to make a future like this actually happen, but...well, we shouldn't have ever needed one. This book was only written a few years ago; I wonder how painful it was for the authors, having to write a backstory that fit the original story's vision while knowing how thoroughly we already fucked it up.

So many people - so many SMART people, people who actually knew what they were talking about - had such a bright vision of what the 21st century could look like. We COULD have fucking done this. We didn't HAVE to disappoint them all.

Sorry. That got heavier than I intended this review to.

...

Just as Springer finishes his speech, the only other non-exposition sentences of the subchapter relate how the entire ship shakes dramatically, as if it just struck something. Looks like I'm getting my dramatic twist of a deep-sea encounter after all. So, let's see what it is!

1.7
​

Much longer chapter this time. The ship really did crash right into the plot!

Alarms sound. The President - who's been a fairly placid, easy to miss presence so far - snaps into action and leads her small army of attendants away to the bridge immediately. Falcon is out of the room at least as fast as her; not because he has responsibilities in this situation, but rather because he knows how serious it is faster than most people. His hydraulic sensors detected the ship beginning to list to one side immediately after the tremor, and he can tell that it's getting worse instead of correcting.

They must have one hell of a hull breach. Probably multiple hull breaches. Aircraft carriers are really hard to sink, and even repurposed into a civilian ship it's going to still be pretty damned hardy.

Falcon rolls back into the lounge were he left Webster and Dhoni, for some fucking reason. I thought he was either going for the lifeboats or the engine room to try and help save the ship, but nope, apparently he just really wanted to get back to these two pricks. It turns out there's more to see in the lounge than just painfully familiar faces, though. One of the robo-dolphins has clamped itself to the big window like an aquarium-cleaner fish, its usual cetacean outline broken up by the many grasping appendages its extended to latch itself in place. There's nothing for it to fix here, and it doesn't seem to be causing the damage either or else this room would already be flooded.

Then Captain Embleton comes in and talks to Falcon and Webster instead of going to the bridge like she's fucking supposed to, because...because I don't even know. Anyway, the President and her retinue are already being boarded onto lifeboat-pods, but she's not sure if they'll be able to evacuate everyone else in time before the hull implodes from the shifting pressure pockets spreading through it. Meanwhile, her stupid robot rolls around the room asking panicking people if it can get them anything.

...

Um...Captain? If the situation is really that bad, why the FUCK are you standing around here whining about it to these random party guests instead of leading the goddamned evacuation? Isn't this your job? Your number one responsibility in this situation?

...

Captain gives exposition about what just happened. Why she isn't doing this over intercom to the entire ship while also updating everyone on safe escape routes and trying to get the ship closer to the surface again, I couldn't fucking hope to tell you. Anyway, someone took control of those dolphinbots and had them latch onto the hull at key spots before overheating their batteries, turning them into improvised bombs. So yes, multiple hull breaches, in places chosen by someone who seems to know a lot about the ship's layout and its vulnerabilities. This one drone still latched to the observation lounge having NOT yet exploded could be due to its battery managing to failsafe despite the hacking, or it may be that the attacker is intentionally avoiding flooding this area and drowning the VIPs at least for now.

Heh, I think I may have actually been on to something with that random "AI wants to take the president hostage" theory. The chapter so far has called a lot of attention to the fact that the ship has a central computer that in turn controls the robodolphins, and there was also a mention that the main computer itself can do wireless interface with nearby networks (it came up briefly during the discussion on virtual reality two subchapters ago). Thing is, the cybersecurity for a system like this that people are trusting the World President's life with has got to be insane. So, while this COULD just be the work of incredibly tech-savvy terrorists, I feel like an entity with unprecedented hacking ability is more likely, and we've been told that AI will be a major plot element of this book, so.

Well, turns out I was wrong. Suddenly another door flies open, and the simps charge in dragging a uniformed sailor by the everything and calling for everyone's attention. Hah, well then, I guess I was only right by strict technicality; the simps ARE artificially augmented intelligences, after all, so...oh, wait, no! The simps didn't do it after all! They actually just CAUGHT the guy who did it! Well then, it appears I was completely wrong, lol. The man they've apprehended is one of the ship's software engineers. One of the simps happened to be getting a tour of the ship's control rooms, and it didn't occur to the saboteur that the ape looking over his shoulder might be a software engineer herself and thus capable of realizing what he was doing.

Pretty dumb mistake of him to have made (after all, they must be managing that blockchain they use for the Pan Nation's principle export), but also an unsurprising one when we learn what his deal is.

You see, when asked why the one drone on the nearby window didn't explode like the others, he explains that it's because he wanted a chance to tell everyone why they were dying before they died; its just too bad the simps dragged him away from the intercom before he could make sure the President heard it. That reason being that the world government is the final stage of an American world domination plot that they've been working toward ever since the second world war. They deliberately waited until the British Empire was weakened and overtaxed before joining the war, thereby ensuring the loss of nearly all its conquests in the following two decades. They also kept a phony conflict going with the Soviets, so that they'd have an excuse to soft-subjugate Britain under the NATO banner to protect them from the big scary Russians, who they then made peace with barely a decade after that. Now (((they))) control the entire planet, and made sure to not even support Britain's bid for a place on the global security council, and that is why they all deserve to drown.

No renegade AI. Just an embarrassing failure to screen the ship's IT department for anglofash.

Anyway, I trust you can all see why he might have had some ideological blinders involving the intelligence of creatures that happen to be different from him.

I feel like this guy must have had at least a couple of accomplices aboard, too. I'm very sceptical that he could have done all this by himself, especially the part with the robo-dolphins exploding when their batteries overload. That's the kind of thing that you'd probably need hands-on hardware sabotage to arrange if you don't have OCP computer magic like a superhuman AI might. Granted, that part might have been done the last time the ship was in dry dock; the drones would have probably been much more accessible then.

Anyway, the ship is sinking lower and lower into the deeps, and if that last drone on the window happens to explode on some secret delayed timer the very normal Englishman gave it a lot of people will die regardless of the depth they're at. Then, the writers do something so insanely hackish that I had trouble believing it and had to reread these couple of pages several times to make sure.

Someone points out that the ship has some escort vessels nearby, and some of them naturally are submarine. They should be able to either come in close or send their own drones to remove that last dolphinbot, right? Well, no, they decide that that's a bad idea; the dolphinbot might be rigged to explode as soon as someone tries tampering with it. Okay, reasonable concern. Then they interrogate the terrorist about this, and he assures them that there is no such trap. Okay, he may or may not be telling the truth. Anyway, it looks like they're going to have to pry that thing off the window on their own without any help from outside.

Because...the drone might be rigged to blow if someone tampers with it.

See, if IT is rigged to do that, then it'll blow up no matter who does the tampering. But, unfortunately, that also prevents the solution that the writers themselves have in mind. So, they have the characters focus on the possibility that it is trapped when the possibility of calling for help is raised, but then assume that he's telling the truth and it ISN'T trapped after disregarding that and trying to think of how to handle it themselves.

This is a very different type of bad writing than what I've come to expect from this book. It's one of the last gaffes I'd expect from a pair of well-respected names in the hard scifi genre. I'm pretty disappointed, not gonna lie.

So. Anyway.

Someone proposes sending divers out, but the ship has already sunk to 2k feet below the surface, and that's too deep for even scifi future divers to handle (at least, with the suits they have onboard). Falcon offers to go himself, since his body is resistant to pressure. Oh gee, who ever saw that coming? Dhoni (wait...she's still in the damned room?) points out that his current loadout doesn't have a sealed head protection though, so the water pressure will kill him even if it doesn't damage his hardware. Falcon says that that's fine, he'll die and they can remote control his body. Sighhhh.

Okay, well that's an amusing subversion of expectations at least, the hero doing a heroic thing getting shot down as impractical.

But then something even stupider than the booby trap sleight-of-hand happens. The captain's annoying little robot, Conseil, is still running around in circles asking people if it can help them, and...fucking hell, just read this page.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Are they seriously, after all that discussion about water pressure, just completely handwaving it away with the assertion that a robot waterproofed against swimming pools can handle six hundred meter depths?

And they somehow have absolutely no other robot aboard this gigantic technological showpiece of a ship that can do this, besides the dolphinbots that were all compromised?

Fucking...

...

Also? Let me just remind you that there's no guarantee that that last drone is going to explode on its own either. Even if it doesn't, they're going to have to evacuate everyone. The ship is sinking at this point no matter what.

This entire conversation is just branching off of a "what if." And if they're willing to take the terrorist at his word when he says tampering with the drone won't detonate it, why won't they ask him if there's a timer and trust his answer about that too?

Granted, I wouldn't trust him to answer EITHER of those questions truthfully. But if they're willing to do one of them...

...

So, they hurry off to quickly give the Conseil a handheld propeller-thruster and some bomb-disarming tools. And then we jump ahead to it completing the operation without a hitch and coming back aboard while everyone claps.

No, seriously. We actually skip the thing. Just jump ahead to the thing having worked. There's like, half a sentence of describing Conseil in action in retrospect.

-____-

Everyone calms down and relaxes, having seemingly forgotten that the ship is STILL FUCKING SINKING. The Dr. Dhoni turns to Falcon and reminds us that for all that the book wants us to think she's a caring, dedicated medical professional, she is in fact a raging turbobitch:

Falcon, there are plenty of holes in the ship right now. Just pick Dhoni up and choose one of them. I'm begging you.

Instead of finally snapping and putting Hope Dhoni out of my misery, Falcon just passively remarks that maybe it's time to start building smarter, more autonomous robots. Conseil would have been able to do this on its own proactively, and those dolphinbots might have been smart enough to resist Sir Nigel Fucknugget's attempt at reprogramming. This prompts Springer (wait, he's still here too?) to go into a longwinded speech about how heros like his great grandfather Seth might have led people to romanticise the human element and thus not put enough effort into AI research.

...okay, I guess the ship isn't sinking anymore? No one is acting like the ship is sinking anymore. Are we supposed to assume that now that the drone is detached, the escort ships could safely approach and plug the holes? But...the drone wasn't AT any of the holes! It was the one drone that DIDN'T explode and create a breach! They wouldn't have had to poke at it at all in order to stop the sinking!

Again. This is the exact opposite of what I'd expect from these authors' credentials. The social cluelessness, sure. This type of flaws, though?

Also, they say that Conseil is "the robot that saved the president." Even though they established that the president had already gotten into a submersible lifeboat without issue by that point.

-___-

They jokingly ask Conseil how it feels about its recent accomplishment and what it plans to do next. Falcon expects it to just say some scripted line that they've all heard it say before, but it surprises everyone by saying that it will have to think about that and decide what it wants to do. Shocking reveal, Conseil has basic machine learning capabilities and can put together new sentences when asked novel questions. DUN DUN DUUUUUUNNNNN.

End chapter.


I was really expecting the story to improve once we got into some action plots and high tech problem solving. I'm stunned and disappointed that it actually got worse.

Later chapters might manage to redeem this book, but I'm less optimistic about that than I was when I finished 1.7 a couple thousand words ago. And consequently not looking forward nearly as much to reaching the rest of this book in the queue.