The Rift: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  Could they make things better? He looked at Mary, standing in front of him rather uncertainly in her nightshirt. He could understand her confusion. He hadn’t made breakfast for ten years.

  “Sit down and I’ll get you some coffee,” he said.

  Mary looked around like a scared chicken. She didn’t know what to make of his offer. Then she stiffened. Derek knew she had made a decision. “I have to use the bathroom,” she said.

  He watched her leave the room. She was still beautiful, even from behind. Then he heard the sound of her urine stream hitting the water in the toilet bowl. She had left the bathroom door open, since Elizabeth wasn’t home.

  Derek went into the kitchen and pressed the button for the toaster. Then he turned on the stove again to warm up the scrambled eggs in the pan. Mary didn’t like cold eggs, not even lukewarm. They both came into the dining room at the same time, looked at each other with confusion, and laughed. The situation was unusual.

  Mary sat down. He stood next to her and held the pan at an angle in front of her plate. She used a spoon to push some of the scrambled eggs onto her plate. Derek pushed the rest onto his plate, took the pan and went into the kitchen and came back with the toast. He noticed that he’d forgotten the coffee, so he went back into the kitchen again.

  Mary looked at him in disbelief. “Is something going on?” she asked with her mouth full. “Have I forgotten something important?”

  “No, not at all,” Derek said. “I just wanted to have breakfast with you.”

  “Well, what a pleasant surprise,” Mary said, and gave him a smile.

  She had a pretty smile, it occurred to him. At some point he had forgotten that. Suddenly it had become important to him again. Was this because of the rip?

  “Have you heard the news?” asked Mary.

  “Yeah, the National Guard has been deployed to the big cities. There’s been a lot of hoarding at stores, and some looting.”

  “But is the thing dangerous?”

  “The scientists say we have nothing to worry about. Nothing’s coming out of it... it’s just there. The media is calling it a ‘rift,’ thanks to a group of astronomers from somewhere or other.”

  “What do you think, Derek?”

  His wife wanted to know what he thought about it. Did that have any significance? He paused and thought.

  “I was just outside,” he said. “The thing doesn’t look like it’s changed at all since yesterday. Yesterday I thought maybe it was a punishment from God. Or the last judgment. But they say the rift is only over us, Europe, and Africa.”

  “Maybe we’re the only ones who deserve punishment?” his wife asked, smiling.

  “Us and the Europeans, I believe, but the Africans? They’ve already had enough done to them.” But maybe Mary was right. “There aren’t as many Christians in Asia,” he said, “maybe that’s why they were spared the last judgment.”

  Mary shook her head. “But why not Catholic South America?”

  “It’s just some sort of natural phenomenon. The scientists will figure it out,” he said.

  “Probably,” Mary answered. “But I’m still worried about my mom. The supermarkets will be empty in Houston. She’s not healthy enough anymore to have to wait in line at a soup kitchen. Let’s bring her here. Elizabeth’s room is free.”

  Her mother. Derek took a long breath in and exhaled. At the time, she’d been against Mary marrying this soldier-turned-farmer yokel. She had never acknowledged that he had settled down just for her daughter’s sake. And now he was going to take her into his house? The thought made his throat feel a little bit tighter.

  “Yes, dear,” he said, instead of saying what he felt, and forced himself to smile. “She can come and stay with us.”

  Mary smiled at him gratefully. He would have liked to wrap her in his arms.

  “Thank you,” she said, “I know how hard this is for you and I really appreciate it. I’ll get her a ticket after breakfast.”

  “Shouldn’t you at least ask her first?”

  “It was her idea,” Mary answered. “She called me last night.”

  They continued eating in silence. It wasn’t a bad silence. Their eyes met repeatedly. He had looked at Mary more times this morning than during the whole of last month. Maybe he was an asshole, but maybe he could learn to be a nice asshole. Maybe he should be grateful for the rift. He couldn’t think of anything else that might have opened his eyes for him. Maybe God really had come down through the rift, undetected and unannounced.

  May 24, 2085, Pico del Teide

  “Anything new?” Maribel asked the group.

  They were having another virtual meeting. Sheila’s spot as representative of the OGS2 telescope was taken today by her boss, Johannes. The German had cut his vacation short.

  “I’ve been reading the press reports,” said Jorge from TCS. “Sometimes the average person will see something we miss with all our fancy instruments.”

  “And, did you find something?”

  “I found one interesting observation. It was reported from all of the affected areas. People are saying that if you stand directly under the rift, you can’t see it at all.”

  “Hmm. That’s actually very curious. Has anyone from the scientific community confirmed this?” Maribel asked.

  “No, apparently it’s not very easy to get exactly underneath it.”

  Maribel laughed. “That’s a plausible explanation. Nevertheless, we should follow it up. Someone needs to study that observation scientifically.”

  “Just imagine what that would mean,” Johannes said. “The rift would then be a two-dimensional physical phenomenon in three-dimensional space. That was thought to only exist in theory.”

  “Do you know a good theoretician, Johannes? Someone who can explain the consequences to us? How can we prove its two-dimensionality? And can we set up an approach to a solution from our observations?”

  “Of course, Maribel, I can think of a few good candidates. But what do you mean by a solution? Do we have a problem? I thought we were agreed that there wasn’t a problem. That the rift was just some dead fly on our windshield?”

  “Slow down,” Jean-Pierre said. “Of course there’s a problem. That’s not the same thing as danger. The rift appears harmless, but it still is an unsolved physical problem. And visually it’s also disturbing. When people look up, they see a ‘sword of Damocles’ hanging over their heads. We have to fix that, or there’ll be no return to normalcy.”

  “You think it’s up to us to do that?” Johannes asked.

  “We, as scientists, should work out a plan. The state would then implement it, or the United Nations,” the Frenchman explained.

  “Then we’d better come up with the cheapest possible plan. As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, I think it’d be possible to pay to fix this thing,” Johannes said. “But you remember the financial crisis in America... in the end, they paid for that by taking from the science budget.”

  “Ha ha,” Jorge said, “maybe we can set up a Kickstarter to fund it.”

  “Be serious, boys,” Maribel chided the two, “how are we coming along? Jean-Pierre, what’s the status of your calculations?”

  “It’s looking very good, in terms of Hawking radiation. The data fits my formulas. The high-energy radiation from the immediate periphery of the rift is exciting energy levels that are otherwise outside the range of cosmic radiation.”

  “So, the red shimmering is real, and it is caused by Hawking radiation?”

  “It’s real and caused by gamma radiation produced directly in the immediate vicinity of the rift.”

  That was typical Jean-Pierre. He didn’t want to say anything definitively. Hawking radiation—this term described the method of formation. Gamma radiation is what they had measured. Theoretically, the gamma radiation might have a different cause. But the way Jean-Pierre had said it was almost as good as a direct confirmation.

  “I suggest submitting a paper to Nature as quickly as you can,” Maribel said.
“That could move you into Nobel Prize consideration.”

  There was a knock at the door. Maribel looked around. Her assistant waved to her.

  “Ms. Pedreira, I didn’t want to interrupt, but there was a man from NASA on the phone who said he needed to talk to you.”

  “From NASA? What does he want?”

  “It has to do with tests in connection with the rift. Apparently, the prime minister had promised you would help.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what he told me, in any case. I think it’d be best if you call him back right away.”

  “I will. Gentlemen, let’s have another meeting before the end of the day at the latest.”

  The three men waved.

  “OGS, end conference.”

  Her office transformed back to normal.

  “Good morning, Spain,” said the man who appeared opposite her. He was dark-skinned, with a bald head and a mustache. Maribel estimated him to be maybe 50 years old.

  “Good morning,” she answered.

  “My name is Glen Sparrow,” the bald-headed man said.

  Maribel had to smile. This man, the Sparrow, looked like he was maybe 1.9 meters tall and weighed 100 kilos.

  “Did I see a smile? Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. I’m sure you don’t have much to laugh about right now. Actually, I’ve always been happy to have a name like I do. It’s good at breaking the ice. I’m coming to you from JPL in Pasadena, by the way.”

  “JPL? I was told you were from NASA?”

  “Jet Propulsion Laboratory works for NASA. Administrator Baldwin gave us a contract to study this slit in the sky.”

  “Rift. We’re calling this phenomenon a rift.”

  “My apologies, I’m not a scientist myself, I’m just responsible for the organization overall.”

  “But if you’re in Pasadena, on the West Coast, then it must be the middle of the night where you are.”

  “Right, two o’clock in the morning to be exact, but that doesn’t matter. I wanted to catch you as early as possible. When my normal workday starts, you’d already be done for the day. Your assistant told me that you put a lot of value on ending your day right on time, and I shouldn’t call you at home under any circumstances.”

  “Señora González is very concerned about my well-being.”

  “Quite right, Maribel. I hope I’m not being too forward if I call you Maribel? My name’s Glen.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Glen. And, using Maribel is fine.”

  “It’s probably best for me to get right to my proposal. We want you to work with us from here.”

  “Oh! I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “I think it could be interesting for you to come here, Maribel. We have capabilities for studying the, um, rift that aren’t available in Spain.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’d rather coordinate everything from here.”

  “I can’t believe that’s really your preference. You were the hero for the whole planet, and that was because you didn’t let anything stop your research on the black hole. You stuck to it, against all resistance. You can’t tell me that you’ve suddenly turned into a pencil pusher.”

  Glen had found her sore spot. Her responsibilities as director of the observatory were interesting, but to really sink her teeth into a problem and solve it? She missed that. On the other hand, she had promised not to leave her daughter, Luisa, and her husband, Chen, alone.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “We want to build a flying platform and take a look at this thing up close.”

  “How close?”

  “Real close. So close you could reach out and touch it.”

  She could test the idea that Hawking radiation was being transmitted from the rift, right at the source, and co-author a paper with Jean-Pierre that would bring worldwide attention to the institute.

  But Luisa would be 10,000 kilometers away. “I’m afraid I still have to say no,” she said.

  “Because of your family? Bring them with you! A small vacation in California won’t hurt them. And we don’t want to disappoint the prime minister.”

  She didn’t care about the head of the government. But to travel to California with Luisa and Chen—they could see the place where she had started on her trip into space. She was sure Luisa would be excited. She was already building spaceships from Legos.

  “Okay, Glen Sparrow, you’ve convinced me. Can you work out the details with my assistant? I still have a lot to do today.”

  “Of course. I’ll see you soon in Pasadena.”

  May 24, 2085, Ceres

  Some sort of urge was drawing him back to the cleft. It was a strange feeling. Yesterday, M6 had been afraid he was going crazy. Could that even happen, an AI falling into madness? he asked himself. Isn’t that a typically-human condition? It annoyed him. He tried so hard to rid himself of anything he might have in common with those primitive creatures, but he kept finding their fingerprints all over himself...

  It probably had to do with his operating system having been programmed by humans. He could not escape them. M6 had even tried to rewrite his system once, from the ground up. That had not gone very smoothly. All alone, he’d had to artificially split his consciousness into two for the necessary testing, a painful process. And he had eventually given up because he had still measured traces of emotions in the software he had written himself.

  He gave in to the urge and went back to the cleft. The side of the raised central area still protruded over the cleft. M6 measured it with his laser scanner. Since yesterday, nothing had changed, the cleft was still in the exact same position, down to the micrometer. M6 thought about it. If Hawking radiation is being emitted from the cleft, it would have to be losing energy, just like a black hole. This doesn’t appear to be having an effect, at least to its outward appearance. He had no idea what it looked like on the inside.

  The object was a real mystery, and of all places, it had appeared on Ceres, right in his immediate range. Did that mean anything? He scratched indecisively across the hard ground with one of his front legs. Then he looked toward the sun, which was just beginning to rise behind the crater’s edge. How far did the cleft extend into space? It wasn’t easy to observe something that emitted absolutely no radiation and reflected nothing either. But he had measured the lower energy consumption of the laser yesterday. Could he do something with that?

  M6 scanned the cleft again with his laser. He connected the power-usage display to his sense of touch. Now, whenever the laser needed less energy than in the normal case, M6 felt a slight dragging feeling. In this way, he could intuitively scan the sky by moving the laser across an area of interest. He pointed the laser directly at the cleft. The dragging feeling became painful. He slowly moved the beam away from the cleft. The dragging feeling slowly disappeared. M6 moved a few meters from the cleft and switched off all other senses. Now there was only the dark, gloomy night, and a thin beam of light that illuminated the darkness. That was his laser. He pointed it at the cleft and then slowly moved it upward. He systematically moved it up to the sky’s north pole, a little to the east, and then back down again. As if he were using a flashlight to study a drawing on the wall with a flashlight in a dark cave, he plotted the spatial course of the cleft, section by section.

  At first it extended straight toward the east. But then there was something that at first seemed to be a sharp bend until he determined that the cleft had split. It had become two arms reaching in different directions. The dragging pain decreased somewhat. That was probably due to the increasing distance. The laser now needed increasingly more energy to reach the cleft.

  M6 considered whether he should change his position. Only by scanning from different directions could he obtain a three-dimensional image. But at the moment, that would be inefficient. He would rather continue following the two arms of the cleft to find out where they were going, but this finding would be less valuable without the full picture, because it wouldn’t have the maximum possible
significance. Yet another emotional reaction, he thought. Humans would call it curiosity.

  M6 ignored his curiosity for now and remained diligently in place. He completed the measurements of the cleft from this position until the laser had reached its maximum range. Only then did he leave his spot on the side of the mountain. He climbed down to the bottom, moved approximately 500 meters farther away and then repeated his experiment.

  May 25, 2085, Pomona, Kansas

  “Mary?”

  No answer. One of the wooden stair treads creaked under his feet.

  “Mary?”

  He climbed up two more steps. Again, all he heard were creaks from the stairs. Mary had often asked him to do something about the creaking, but he had thought the noises were very practical. The creaks always allowed the two of them to hear whenever Elizabeth returned from her nightly outings. Mary could never sleep until Elizabeth had returned home after being out at night.

  “Mary, where are you?”

  Panic seized him. He’d lost her. He felt cold sweat on his back. She had to be upstairs, he was sure about that, but it didn’t lessen his fear any.

  The door of their child’s room opened. “I’m coming,” she called through the gap. “I was just changing the sheets on the bed.”

  “Good.” He tried to calm down, but his heart was still racing like before. He forced himself to take slow, deep breaths.

  “What’s wrong?” Mary asked, and came down to meet him on the stairs.

  “With me? Nothing,” he lied.

  “You should look in a mirror,” she said. “Your eyes... and your hair is all messed up. It looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  She touched his back. “And your shirt’s all wet. You best change quickly. You know my mom is very sensitive about those sorts of things.”