Project Eternum 1

Once they began their tutelage under their respective mentors, Don and Diana fell into a pattern.

Wake up, feed and walk Mercedes together, clean themselves, go to the cafeteria for breakfast.

Eat, follow the Captain, Scholar, or whoever else they assigned to tutor them for the day, and do what they were told.

At lunch they would rendezvous, walk Mercedes again, and return to their teachers rested.

Training would end a few hours after this, and they would once again return to the Noah. There they would share some of what they learned with each other before once again returning to the dining hall for dinner.

They were usually exhausted enough, either mentally or physically, to just fall asleep once they got into bed, Mercedes at their feet.

Don fell into slumber immediately the first week or so, making talk before bed difficult. Luckily, a 'handsy' incident only happened once.

After this period of his body getting used to the strain, he could keep awake long enough far a small conversation, but they were running out of topics. There was something he wanted to know though.

"When I woke up, do you remember how you talked about how I wasn't raised by my biological family and all that?"

"I remember."

"At that time you also mentioned that I, we, are the product of some experiment of something like that. Do you think you could elaborate on it?"

"Sure. It was called Project Eternum, and it was designed to test a potential solution to the progress barrier. Before we continue, do you know what the progress barrier is?"

"I can't say I've heard of it."

"It isn't surprising considering your lifelong focus. Simply put, the progress barrier is a soft limitation to the progress that humanity as a whole can achieve. With that said, can you make a guess what factors contribute to this barrier?"

"What limits our progress? Let's see. Off the top of my head I would think a lack of things to discover would be a big one, not that I know much about the technological frontier. Another one would be lack of ability and poor management I think, but something tells me those don't necessarily apply to our situation."

"Those are both good guesses, and the second one was certainly an issue in the past. Your first one unfortunately doesn't really apply. Logically, it should be harder to make progress if there are less areas to make progress in, but this doesn't hold in practice. This is because, theoretically at least, there are an infinite number of fields where 'progress' can be made, we just haven't discovered them yet."

"So it's a classical case of infinity minus one equals infinity?"

"Pretty much."

"That makes sense. Can you tell me the other factors?"

"I planned on it. As you guessed before, mismanagement can be a big factor. Assigning talents away from their most efficient field is a waste of potential, but our governing and educational systems didn't have that issue.

The other side of that is a lack of talent. You can't manage what you don't have, but with the populations of the combined inner ring there wasn't a distinct lack of talent.

A pretty big factor is that not all of the populace cannot be mobilized for the sake of progress. At one point, before the Skinnik crisis, that may have been a possibility, but the looming threat of a hostile entity once again taking over automated systems required for the sustaining of society made the use of artificial intelligence an impossibility."

"ARC and I talked a bit about that. Did nobody come up with an alternative? Like making a separate system?"

"We tried, and failed. Skinnik can evolve and grow, just like ARC though not as well. If there is even the slightest twinkle of compatibility between any system it has set up and any halfway intelligent system we made, it can corrupt it in some way.

Regardless, that means that a large portion of people, human resources, are occupied in keeping the system running. Fortunately, the management of the system means that everyone is in roughly their most efficient job, so not much efficiency is lost.

Another problem that arises is that it takes time to develop the necessary equipment to get accurate readings for something new. Split, as an example, took us five years to get sensors on the level that could be used to determine a threat. My grandfather told me that, as it stands, they are just about as crude as the first generation of sonar systems."

Don was vaguely aware of the Split sensor's crudeness, but he didn't realize that it was first generation. "So it's a passive sensor not to ensure stealth, but because we don't know how to make it active?"

"That isn't correct." ARC would clarify its capabilities. "We know exactly how to use Split pulses and the resulting feedback to make an active sensor, there was just not a reason to make it. Split didn't bounce off of the vast majority of matter, so it would be an expensive waste of space."

"Is that no longer the case?" ARC made it sound like it would be completely useless.

"That is uncertain. Until I can set up a few tests, it will remain that way."

"Anyways." Diana wanted to get back on topic. She couldn't keep up with this stuff. "The final limitation is the hard limit on knowledge that a singular person can accumulate over the course of their life. There are ways to increase this and streamline the process, longer education, earlier education, hyper concentration of less important subjects, hyper specialization towards a certain task, and reduction of distraction are all ways to increase this.

However there is an upper limit to this, even those considered geniuses can only learn so fast. Even if they spent every waking moment working towards a goal, they might not have enough time to learn what is necessary to make a breakthrough."