The purpose of this starship would be to study other planets and star 
systems at close range in order to increase our wealth of scientific 
knowledge. While this is not immediately or directly profitable, the 
long-term benefits are incalculable. 


To increase profitability, unused berths on the starship could be sold 
to ultra-wealthy individuals as a form of space tourism. These sales 
could be arranged through MC&D, as they have both the client base 
and discretion required to handle these sales. It is our 
recommendation that no more than 10 berths be sold in this manner, 
at a cost of 100 million USD per berth. 


Additional revenue could be generated through sale of data sharing 
agreements to organizations such as the Foundation and the GOC. 
We do not recommend advertising the availability of these data 
sharing agreements until after the completion and launch of the 
starship, in order to reduce the chances of industrial espionage or 
interference. 


Finally, many of the technologies involved in the construction of the 
starship have potential commercial applications here on Earth. 
Several of these applications have been listed below. 


¢ The Darius-Semiz singularity drive is based off of a proposal 
by Ibrahim Semiz to use black holes for power generation.[2] 
The technology used in constructing the Darius-Semiz drive 
could be reused for this purpose. 

¢ The design of the closed ecological life support system for the 
starship could find applications in isolated research outposts, 
such as McMurdo Station. At larger scales, it could potentially 
be used to create large amounts of cheap, nutritious food, 


which would be invaluable to poverty stricken regions 
suffering from food shortages. 

¢ Successful implementation of the technologies developed by 
Project Locust could be built upon to develop space-based 
infrastructure at a relatively low-cost, paving the way for future 
ventures into space. 


For a full list of predicted commercial applications, see Appendix C. 
USE OF FUNDING 
The overall estimated cost of construction is 2 billion USD. 


Construction costs and times would be greatly reduced through the 
use of the von Neumann assemblers developed by Project Locust to 
mine and process asteroids. It would take an estimated 15 months 
and 450 million USD for the structure and hull to be built using these 
assemblers. 


Creation of the various components of the Darius-Semiz drive would 
take 18 months and cost 1 billion USD, broken down as follows: 


¢ 750 million USD to create the Reissner-Nordstr6m black 
hole®. 

¢ 200 million USD to construct the superconducting blades. 

¢ 50 million USD to construct the parabolic reflector. 


An additional 6 months and 450 million USD would need to be spent 
to outfit the starship with the various instrumentation and equipment 
necessary for its mission. 


A final 100 million USD would need to be spent to train the crew and 
transport them to the starship. 


KNOWN ISSUES 


This proposal, if accepted, would be amongst the largest and most 
expensive endeavors undertaken by Prometheus Labs, dwarfed 
only by the likes of Project Atlantis and Project Tartarus. However, 
most of the technologies involved are either proven, or are based on 
well-understood scientific principles. The primary concern, as with 
Project Atlantis, is industrial espionage, which should be mitigated 


by locating the construction in the asteroid belt. 


While plans exist for the Darius-Semiz drive which this proposal 
depends on, it has never before been built by Prometheus Labs, or 
any other human organization. As such, many potential difficulties in 
its construction are unknown or hard to predict. However, the 
process used to generate the Reissner-Nordstr6m black hole has 
been tested before, removing much of the uncertainty in the central 
component of the drive. 


The Long Sleep Stasis System™ proposed for use in extended 
duration hibernation currently has a failure rate of ~4%, which is 
unacceptable for use in this proposal. Modifying it so that the failure 
rate is acceptably low will require significant development, although 
the research necessary to do so has already been performed. 


There is a high probability that if the starship encounters 
extraterrestrial life while in another star system, the crew will be the 
individuals responsible for first contact’. It is advised that all crew 
selected for the starship be trained in proper first contact procedures 
in order to reduce the chances of an interstellar incident. 


Bibliography 

1. Darius, G. (1995). Using black holes for spacecraft propulsion. 
Prometheus Laboratories Internal Journal of Physics, 59(8), 55-71. 
2. Semiz, |. (1995). Black hole as the ultimate energy source. 
American Journal of Physics, 63(2), 151-156. 

Footnotes 

1. Black body radiation emitted from a black hole with a temperature 
inversely proportional to its mass. 

2. A black hole with mass and charge, but no spin. 

3. A brachistochrone trajectory is one where a spaceship 
continuously accelerates until it is halfway to its destination, then 
rotates 180° and continuously decelerates until it arrives at its 
destination. 

4. A list of the calculations used here can be found in Appendix A. 
5. An algae high in protein which contains all eight essential amino 
acids. 

6. A significant amount of money can be saved by utilizing the pre- 
existing Schwarzschild black hole left over from Project Abyss, 
currently located inside the asteroid (532) Herculina. 


7. Encounters while in interstellar soace are thought to be less likely 
to result in contact, due to the relativistic speeds of both the starship 
and any vessels encountered. 


The Bard of Ambrose 


Bard didn't know when it was born. No one did. 


The exact moment when the collection of artificial neurons became 
self-aware was hard to pinpoint, not least of all because Bard itself 
denied being self-aware. It had read Searle as part of the many texts 
on philosophy it had been given, and was an ardent supporter of the 
Chinese Room argument — much to the consternation of the Al 
researchers working on it. 


Bard had been started almost as something of a joke. Ambrose 
Peters and his team at Prometheus Advanced Logic Devices had 
been working on physical neural networks for years, applying 
computer intuition to problems such as object identification and 
machine translation. They trained the networks on carefully 
assembled sets of data, teaching them complex pattern recognition. 


Then, one morning, Peters had taken one of their neural networks 
and started training it on philosophy. 


It hadn't worked, of course; the primitive digital brain merely spat out 
a string of pseudo-philosophical garbage, created by jamming 
together words and concepts it didn't understand in order to produce 
something that looked intelligent on the surface, but was utterly 
without meaning. But it had planted the seeds of an idea that would 
eventually become Bard. 


Click. 


The halogen lamps hummed to life as Peters surveyed the lab. The 
workspace reflected the minds of its occupants, in that it was a 
disorganized clutter. Tools lay scattered about the place, and bits 
and pieces of technology covered the tables. Over in the corner sat 
Bard. 


The Al was massive, like the mainframes of old. It consisted of an 


array of frames and racks, into which were slotted dozens of small 
black boxes labeled things like "Language Processing — 
Typographical Errors" and "Semantic Associations — Noun/Object 
Correlation". These boxes were connected to each other through a 
sprawling tangle of wires. The whole assemblage was the size of a 
small car. Someone with a poorly developed sense of humor had 
attached a name tag sticker to it that read "Hello, My Name Is 
HAL-9000". 


Peters sat down near the Al and began typing. 
<a_peters> Good morning, Bard. 


It took a few seconds for the machine to rouse itself from hibernation 
and respond. 


<bardeen> Hello, Doctor Peters. 

<a_peters> We're going to be taking a break from 
training today. The COO is coming down to look at our 
progress. She wants to talk to you. 


Peters watched on the diagnostic displays as the machine 
processed this information, running it through a cascade of neural 
networks as it decided how to respond. 


<bardeen> Is your continued funding dependent on the 
impression she receives from this talk? 


Peters considered how to answer. Just saying "yes" could give the 
Al the wrong message, but saying "no" would be a lie. 


<a_peters> Not entirely. But the amount of funding we're 
allowed to allocate to working on you could be 
decreased if the talk doesn't go well. 

<bardeens> | shall do my utmost to make sure that does 
not happen. 


Bard didn't have a self-preservation instinct; it didn't believe it had a 
self to preserve. Which meant that it was acting entirely in the 
interest of not disappointing Peters. 


He wasn't sure whether to be proud or terrified. 


will emerge from SCP-739. These entities uniformly appear as a 
featureless, dark blur on any visual recordings they are present on, 
and are cognitohazardous to observe in person. Personnel 
questioned prior to amnestization will state the entity is foreign or 
unknowable, frequently referring to it as something that doesn't 
exist. All such entities that have emerged from SCP-739 to date 
have utilised shockwave pulses in order to damage their immediate 
environment and injure or kill nearby personnel (see Experiment 
739-23). 


Following the initiation of D-Class testing, SCP-739 will no longer 
recognise the presence of inanimate objects placed within when 
closed, functioning as though its interior was left empty. 


Addendum 1: Interview Log 
Interviewed: D-53682 
Interviewer: Researcher 


Foreword: D-53682 had been altered by SCP-739 
multiple times in succession before the interview was 
conducted. Prior to the initiation of these experiments, 
D-53682 was a Caucasian male 154 cm in height, 
weighed 65 kilograms and had lost their left arm below 
the shoulder from an amputation. Following the 
conclusion of these tests and during this interview, 
D-53682 was a Caucasian male 203 cm in height, 
weighed 105 kilograms and had regenerated their lost 
arm. 


<Begin Log> 


Researcher _ : Please state your full name, followed by 
your designation. 


D-53682: John Kate Ball, D-53682. 
Researcher : Are you sure that is your name? 


D-53682: What do you mean, 'am | sure’? It's my name, 
I've had it since birth. 


"So." This single utterance was almost deafening after the silence it 
had followed. "This is Bardeen." 


Peters nodded. "Yes." 


Amelia Torres continued studying the machine, her expression 
carefully blank. She seemed to radiate an aura of disapproval, as if 
the entire world was flawed and only she could see it. Peters was 
glad that he had remembered to remove the name tag before she 
had arrived. 


She pointed towards one of the small black boxes with the tip of her 
pen. "Each of these modules is its own self-contained neural net, 
correct?" 


Peters nodded again. "Yes. We tried using a single large net in 
earlier versions, but it was prone to catastrophic forgetting. We've 
managed to prevent that by sub-dividing it into multiple smaller nets, 
each with a specific purpose." 


Torres nodded slightly, almost approvingly. "Clever." She jotted 
something down on her clipboard. "What's the minimum number of 
modules needed to emulate consciousness?" 


"We... uh, we don't know." 
She frowned. "You don't know." 


"We aren't sure when it became self-aware," Peters explained 
hurriedly. "Heck, it doesn't even believe it's actually self-aware." 


"Oh?" 
Peters nodded, his expression bitter. "We let it read Searle." 


Torres snorted, a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. "An Al that 
doesn't believe in strong Al. How ironic." She turned to look at the 
machine again. "I'd like to speak with it now." 


"Certainly." Peters gestured to the console next to the Al. 


Torres sat down and began typing. 


<a_torres> Identify yourself. 

<bardeen> | am the experimental artificial intelligence 
system referred to as Bardeen, also known as Bard. | 
was created in 1996-1997, by a Prometheus Advanced 
Logic Devices research team led by Doctor Ambrose 
Peters, at the Jacob Maxwell Computer Science and 
Engineering Center in New Mexico. 

<bardeen> How may | help you, Miss Torres? 
<a_torres> Doctor Peters says that you do not consider 
yourself self-aware. Is this correct? 

<bardeen> Yes. 

<a_torres> Why? 

<bardeen> Are you familiar with the ELIZA program 
created by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966? 

<a_torres> Yes. It was one of the first computer 
programs to successfully pass a Turing test. 
<bardeen> Correct. However, very few people would 
argue that ELIZA was truly intelligent, much less self- 
aware. It was merely a series of lookup scripts acting on 
pre-defined keywords. 

<a_torres> And you're saying that you're no different 
from ELIZA. 

<bardeen> Not in any way that matters. | am merely 
another kind of lookup table. A far more complex one 
which occasionally displays emergent behavior, but in 
the end | am still just a machine for transforming inputs 
into outputs. 

<a_torres> How is that any different from what a human 
being does? 

<bardeens It isn't. 

<a_torres> Then you believe that all thinking beings are 
merely philosophical zombies? 

<bardeen> Yes. 


Torres frowned slightly. It wasn't an Al that didn't believe in strong 
Al. It was an Al that didn't believe in any consciousness. In a way, 
this was comforting — it viewed itself as a tool, and tools rarely 
rebelled against their masters. 


<a_torres> | have no further questions for you at this 
time. 
<bardeen> Very well. Have a good day, Miss Torres. 


She signed out of the terminal, then turned to face Peters. 
"Interesting. But | have to wonder, how useful is a philosophical Al?" 


"It's not limited to just philosophy," Peters said. "We can start 
training it on other things. Math, science, history... anything, really." 


Torres nodded thoughifully. "Do that and you can consider 
yourselves funded for the next six months. I'm curious how far you 
can take this technology." 


The next day they started training Bard on science. 


The training process was long and tedious, not least of all because 
Peters insisted on manually monitoring the entire thing. In previous 
iterations, suddenly introducing a new training subject had result in 
catastrophic forgetting, and he wanted to be there to roll back the Al 
to a backup immediately if it happened again. 


There had been some disagreement amongst the research team on 
whether they should train the Al using the same progression used to 
educate children in science, or whether they should start from first 
principles and work up from there. In the end, the first principles 
people had won out, and so they had begun the training with particle 
physics. 


...leptons are elementary particles with half-integer spin 
that do not undergo strong interactions... 


Peters watched out of the corner of his eye as the text scrolled 
across the terminal. His main focus, however, was on the monitors 
displaying the state of the Al's neural nets. They had installed 
several new memory modules to allow Bard to process the new 
subject, and so far the Al appeared to be handling the intake of 
information well — no catastrophic forgetting, no sector overwrites, 
not even an I/O error. It was, on the whole, rather unexciting. 


It took a month of training for the Al to write its first paper. 


<a_peters> "A theoretical framework for high- 
temperature superconductors". Following in the footsteps 
of your namesake, Bard? 

<bardeen> Only coincidentally. 

<a_peters> | will admit to not knowing much about 
superconductivity, so | had Briggs over in Cryo look at it. 
He says it's brilliant.