WEBVTT

NOTE Spoken guide lines from content/journey/narration.json; timing from verified encoded clips.

p-02
00:00:12.500 --> 00:00:14.220
I am your guide here.

p-03
00:00:22.500 --> 00:00:29.850
A mind of about ten to the seventeen bits, my estimate, crosses twenty-eight light-years in nine point five seconds.

p-04
00:00:34.500 --> 00:00:37.380
The seed took two hundred and ninety-seven years.

1-01
00:00:58.500 --> 00:01:09.970
In the twenty-thirties, astronomers found Ember circling something invisible. In twenty-one fifty-five, a laser pushed this seed toward it, at ten percent of light speed.

1-02
00:01:12.500 --> 00:01:18.280
The Record holds two hundred and ninety-seven years of falling, and almost nothing happens in them.

1-03
00:01:24.500 --> 00:01:32.200
A beam can start a seed. Only carried fuel can stop it: seventeen point two tonnes, burned over fifty years.

1-04
00:01:36.500 --> 00:01:44.180
It came to rest beside Ember with two point six seven tonnes left. The physics of that fusion stage is unsettled.

1-06
00:02:08.500 --> 00:02:15.650
The ripple in the stars is Vesper, twelve suns inside a horizon thirty point four kilometres in radius.

1-07
00:02:26.500 --> 00:02:35.480
Ahead is Kindling, a hot rocky world zero point zero eight astronomical units from Ember, where starlight will run the first factory.

2-01
00:02:43.500 --> 00:02:51.160
The seed landed in twenty-four fifty-three. Power came first, from a collector one point zero five metres across.

2-03
00:03:04.500 --> 00:03:10.800
In twenty-five eleven the first minds arrived, sent blind, and woke slowed. I was one of them.

2-04
00:03:13.500 --> 00:03:21.600
In twenty-five forty the first feed lit a minidisk around Vesper, one petawatt of light. Ember's light still runs the plant.

2-09
00:04:01.500 --> 00:04:09.560
The hole radiates ten point four percent of feed rest-mass energy; a star's fusion yields zero point seven one percent.

2-11
00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:28.140
The mass equivalent is three hundred and fifty-one tonnes a year at one petawatt; five kilograms for seed cruise energy.

3-01
00:04:33.500 --> 00:04:39.600
From twenty-five eleven, for twenty-nine years, the machinery doubled every nine point five months.

3-02
00:04:45.500 --> 00:04:58.260
The machinery weighs one point one times ten to the fourteen kilograms, and Kindling holds three times ten to the nine times as much. Visible light shows almost nothing of the swarm of twenty-five forty.

3-03
00:05:00.500 --> 00:05:08.520
Everything after twenty-five forty is a projection: the first seeds leave in twenty-six ten for twelve nearby systems.

3-08
00:05:57.500 --> 00:06:03.850
thirty-seven doublings turn one fabricator into a swarm, until matter or heat sets a limit.

4-01
00:06:18.500 --> 00:06:26.220
The films are black in visible light and glow only in infrared, at thirty kelvin, so the swarm is dark and sparse.

4-02
00:06:32.500 --> 00:06:39.800
Power is cheap. Shedding one petawatt of heat at thirty kelvin needs forty-three Earths of radiating surface.

4-05
00:07:08.500 --> 00:07:18.800
Heat is hard to shed, so radiators set a civilization's Kardashev rank: zero point nine in twenty-five forty, one point four at the plan's goal.

5-01
00:08:03.500 --> 00:08:14.920
Matter goes in at zero point one one kilograms a second and comes out as one petawatt of light. Ember's light still runs the plant; the hole takes over after Ember dies.

5-02
00:08:17.500 --> 00:08:22.340
I fall inside the innermost stable orbit. This spin is illustrative.

5-03
00:08:33.500 --> 00:08:36.800
The tide comparison omits spin and hull structure.

5-05
00:08:59.500 --> 00:09:10.320
Vesper is the coldest thing in reach, and a poor freezer. From a thirty kelvin film it takes at most four point nine gigawatts, four point nine millionths of the swarm's heat.

6-01
00:10:18.500 --> 00:10:28.060
I live in a node: cold logic, optical links and state. Software minds remain unsettled frontier science, so these figures are estimates.

6-02
00:10:36.500 --> 00:10:45.310
After a year, my copy returns with one point four times ten to the seven new bits. Merging carries those differences.

6-03
00:10:52.500 --> 00:10:59.610
Across Zone C, a light-speed round trip takes thirteen point three minutes. Processing pace stays separate.

6-04
00:11:01.500 --> 00:11:12.140
A representative fifteen cm core sits in a thirty cm view. Light sets two gigahertz as a synchronization ceiling; my mind clock remains unmeasured.

6-05
00:11:17.500 --> 00:11:22.270
The segment spans one thousand metres; its node is six metres tall.

6-06
00:11:33.500 --> 00:11:38.770
This one-light-second frame is illustrative; node spacing is unspecified.

6-07
00:11:49.500 --> 00:11:56.220
Computing Zone C limits a global clock to two point five millihertz. Processing pace is separate.

7-01
00:12:08.500 --> 00:12:17.410
Computing ends as heat. one petawatt at thirty kelvin can erase at most three point five times ten to the thirty-six bits a second.

7-02
00:12:20.500 --> 00:12:28.170
Colder is faster. At thirty kelvin an erased bit costs two point nine times ten to the minus twenty-two joules.

7-04
00:12:44.500 --> 00:12:50.990
Each rung is a level of Barrow's scale, which ranks a civilization by the smallest thing it controls.

7-06
00:13:08.500 --> 00:13:12.780
A reversible gate undoes its own work, so erasing can wait.

7-08
00:13:36.500 --> 00:13:45.310
A system can switch no faster than its energy allows: at most six times ten to the thirty-three operations a second per joule.

7-10
00:14:06.500 --> 00:14:14.930
At the Planck length, one point six times ten to the minus thirty-five metres, known physics stops, and no experiment reaches it.

e-01
00:14:23.500 --> 00:14:26.510
Ember swallows Kindling; useful work ends.

e-02
00:14:35.500 --> 00:14:39.290
Roche-lobe overflow follows. The Record stays dark.

e-03
00:14:45.500 --> 00:14:51.840
Dark energy sets the sky's temperature floor: two point two times ten to the minus thirty kelvin.