“Okay, got it. So, we won’t be able to launch today?”
“Exactly, that’s why I’m happy I reached you. Go back to your hotel, enjoy the day with your family, and I’ll take care of the preparations here.”
“A little bit stressed, huh?”
Glen nodded. “It’s a catastrophe. The bomb response unit will have to pick up and overturn and inspect everything. We’ll have to repeat all our tests. After they let us back in, of course. Right now they’re still doing their thing.”
“Then I wish you success and no more added stress.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow. Same time.”
Maribel was back in the hotel an hour later. She paid for the ride with her card. The doorman greeted her. She ran to the elevator. If she was lucky, Chen and Luisa would still be there. She pressed the silver button with the number 9. The doors closed quietly, a barely identifiable melody murmuring in the background. Will there be elevator music in the space elevator too? On the 9th floor she hurried through the corridor. Thick carpet damped the sounds of her footsteps. She passed a maid with a large cart full of sheets and towels. She liked how old-fashioned this hotel was, since most other hotels had switched to special robots for room service.
“Good morning,” the woman greeted her.
Maribel returned the greeting. She reached the door to her suite, opened it with her card, and stepped in. She noticed at once that nobody else was there. She was alone. Room service hadn’t been there yet. The curtains in the bedroom were still closed. She thought she could still see the impression that her daughter had left in the middle of the bed.
She threw herself onto the bed and felt herself bounce due to the rebound from the mattress springs. Should she try to sleep a little more? Chen and Luisa wouldn’t miss her. They might even be a bit disappointed if she suddenly showed up. When Luisa was with her father, Maribel thought that he always allowed her more latitude than she would. That was seldom ever a problem, luckily.
She decided to do some work, even if it was Saturday. Maybe this Tarassov from the Institute for Planetary Science had something for her already. He seemed to be the type to work at night, so she decided she could at least try to reach him. She dialed the number that he had emailed to her.
In one minute Tarassov’s face appeared on the projected surface. Maribel tried to read his expression and decided the best fit was ‘confused.’
“I just tried to reach you a short time ago, Ms. Pedreira,” the Russian said, scratching his nose.
“I was on my way to the base. But I appreciate you trying.”
“Yes, I was told you were in a car. When I tried to reach you there, I was told you were already talking with someone else.”
Maribel remembered her call with Glen Sparrow and nodded. “Have you found out something new about the rift?” she asked.
“Yes and no. From satellite images we can confirm that it does end where you said it did.”
“Has your mobile unit taken a closer look?”
“What mobile unit are you talking about?”
“You told me about a mobile research unit of the M-series.”
Tarassov paused thoughtfully. Maribel had the feeling that he was composing his next sentence very carefully.
Why? she wondered. Is there something you’re trying to hide?
“Our robot, M6, apparently tried to examine the rift. He even built a kind of platform so that he could get closer to it. I’ll gladly send you the images.”
“Very clever.”
“Yes. Only, unfortunately, our M6 then disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Maribel watched Tarassov’s face, but he had put on his poker face.
“Yes. You heard correctly. He’s gone. It’s as if he never existed.”
She had to sit down. Little by little an image formed in her subconscious. She didn’t know how the picture would turn out yet, but it scared her. She had the feeling that when it was complete, it would overwhelm her, plunging her and everyone else into darkness. She could not let that happen, not for her sake alone, but for Luisa’s, and Chen’s.
“That’s an astonishing statement, Tarassov. You know that, right?”
The Russian nodded.
Something didn’t seem right to her, but she had no idea yet what it was.
“Ah, well, astonishing, maybe, we’ll have to see,” he said. Tarassov sounded extremely reserved. Was that his real personality? She would have to ask a few colleagues about that.
“You’re the first one to show that the rift might be a danger,” she said. “If that’s confirmed, it could cause large-scale panic here on Earth.”
The Russian opened his mouth, but then closed it again. “I...” he said, “that’s why I need to ask you to keep this to yourself. Not even our intelligence agencies know about it. Maybe we can keep it from getting out for a while. Nothing’s happened on Earth yet, so why should we incite panic?”
Tarassov sounded surprisingly reasonable. She might have made that suggestion herself. Then it finally occurred to her what was bothering her about the whole situation.
“I’ve got another question, Mr. Tarassov.”
“Yes?” Tarassov raised his eyebrows. Did he know what she was going to say?
“You said M6 had disappeared—as if he never existed.”
“Correct.”
“But you still know that he was stationed on Ceres? How can that be, if he never existed?”
The Russian scientist turned red. Her suspicions had been justified. Something wasn’t right with his story.
“It’s complicated,” Tarassov said finally.
“I’m sure that’s true. But our job is to explain complicated things and make them understandable. I need you to try.”
“Give me half an hour. I’ll need a secure connection.”
“Understood. I’ll wait for your call.”
Maribel was not happy with herself. She could have gone off to find Chen and Luisa, but instead she was here, waiting for the Russian to call her back. He had sounded stressed. Telling lies caused stress. But was that the only reason? It probably had something to do with the rift, just like it was affecting everything else right now. Whether directly or indirectly, the phenomenon was exerting much more influence on people’s lives than was being officially admitted.
She sat down on the sofa and searched the Internet for what people were thinking about the rift. Naturally, there were some conspiracy theorists who thought everything was an insidious plan by a world government or the Illuminati. And then there were people who were reporting strange dreams in which they were together with other people whom they couldn’t remember when they were awake.
The number of cases of déjà vu had increased. Maribel checked the numbers for different time periods. In recent days there was a significant increase in the number of searches for this term. She looked at a few forum entries. Most of the descriptions didn’t fit the classical definition of déjà vu, but certainly seemed like variations. She couldn’t discern any underlying pattern. Why hadn’t this occurred to anyone else? Is it even significant? I’m not a sociologist.
Once again, she had the thought that scientific disciplines were too strictly separated. The rift was the domain of physicists, the scientific community had decided. But there also seemed to be plenty of material for psychologists, sociologists, and medical doctors too. Were people maybe sleeping significantly worse now than before? Maybe physicists would have found the secret to the rift a long time ago by listening to other people instead of just trying to come up with new tests.
And then, of course, there was the most obvious question: Why, of all things, had the most obvious experiment not yet been performed? Essentially, intentionally throwing something into the rift.
Maribel closed her eyes. Maybe she could still get a few minutes of sleep. Then her phone vibrated. It was a message from Russia, encoded with her public key. She confirmed receipt with her password and a private connection was established. Theore
tically, nobody could eavesdrop on them now.
“I’m back,” her Russian colleague said. He was sitting at his desk with the camera at least two meters away. The desk was made in a rustic style from light-colored wood, probably birch. Tarassov leaned back in a large swivel chair.
“Thank you for your patience,” he said.
“I’m very interested to hear your explanation.”
“Now I can speak plainly. The matter is very controversial politically.”
“What do you mean?”
“All evidence points to us never having a mobile research robot on Ceres. I can’t remember ever approving or even discussing any plans for it. That, however, would be a huge mistake that nobody in the Academy would excuse. I would lose my job. One of my associates then came up with the idea of covering it up. Nobody else knows about it. Now he’s got me in his back pocket.”
“Understood,” Maribel said. “But then how did you come up with M6?”
“You see, our databases have records for M-models 1 to 5, and then the numbering skips 6 and continues on with 7. And these robots are on all the larger celestial bodies, but not Ceres. So, I think you can see my lie is not all that far-fetched.”
“M6 must have been planned for Ceres.”
“Yes, but according to our documents, it was never sent there. We simply continued onward with M7.”
“Could there have been a reason for that?” Maribel asked.
“None that I can think of, apart from extreme sloppiness, which would come back to me again. Therefore, M6 must have existed. I would be very much indebted to you if you would not publicly question this. In any case, I would owe you a big favor.”
Maribel had no interest in the internal politics of the Russian scientific community. But it could never hurt to be able to ask for a favor from the head of the Russian Institute for Planetary Science. Back in ‘72, she had obtained the most important data for her discovery only because an old colleague of hers had called in a favor or two. That was the way the world worked.
“Okay, I agree,” she said.
Tarassov smiled and no longer looked quite so stressed. “As far as advancing your own research, you also probably wouldn’t get any farther, if someone else took over my position,” the Russian said.
Maribel nodded. “Was that it?”
“One more thing,” Tarassov said. “We’ve looked at the images from our relay satellite around Ceres. The fact that it’s even there is one indication that M6 existed at one point.”
“That’s true. Why would you need a relay station if there was nothing to relay?”
“Someone could always argue that we had then simply forgotten the plans for M6. I’ll admit that sometimes things get very chaotic around here.”
“NASA is not any different. I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear that.”
“In the satellite images, we can see a kind of ramp and platform that extends directly up to the end of the rift on Ceres. It’s clearly an artificial structure. It’s large enough for an M-series robot to fit on. We’ve calculated that an M-robot could easily reach the rift from this platform.”
“That... that’s a very interesting observation,” she said.
It was immediately clear to her that she had just uttered the understatement of the year. A non-existent robot had built a platform on Ceres, in order to allow it to enter the rift. It could hardly be interpreted any other way. So, it must have existed before the test had started. Then it had jumped into the rift and had been completely erased from reality.
But not quite completely. Apparently, the propagation of cause-and-effect relationships had limits. Assuming an object disappeared from this universe, then all its atoms would have never existed. There would have to be some form of mechanism that removed all evidence of the existence of each individual atom stretching all the way back to the Big Bang. Presumably there was some mechanism that was responsible for maintaining logical relationships and relinking cause and effect. But it appeared that its effectiveness was constrained in some way.
Perhaps it behaved similarly to gravity. In principle, gravity’s effects extended to infinity. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way pulls on every person on Earth by means of gravity. And yet we can jump and move around and not even notice anything of its pull, because the force of attraction to the Earth under our feet is much, much greater and masks all other sources of gravitational forces. Maybe, she thought, cause-and-effect relationships functioned in a similar fashion. When two states are strongly linked, they attract each other strongly, and they have more influence on each other than if they were only loosely associated. The reality of Maribel Pedreira, the reality field that surrounded her, had almost no points of contact with the reality of Tarassov. So, she could remember the previous conversation about M6, but the Russian couldn’t.
Suddenly Maribel noticed that the connection to Russia was still open. Tarassov had probably been just as lost in his thoughts as she had been in hers.
“Mr. Tarassov,” she said, “you’ve given me very interesting and important information. I’m going to need some time to process it and understand all its ramifications.”
“Me too,” Tarassov said. “The consequences are so inscrutable that every train of thought gets lost in a fog of contradictions.”
Maribel sighed. “Then I hope you’ll find a way into some clearer thinking. If you hear from M6, will you call me?”
“Of course. Have a nice weekend!”
“You too.”
Maribel ended the connection. If Tarassov only knew! That is, if he followed the news he must already know. Tomorrow she would be launching in the space elevator.
She stood up and stretched. But that was tomorrow. Today was today. She took out her flower-patterned dress from the closet and changed into it. Then she put on her white sandals. If she hurried, she could still have lunch with her family.
June 2, 2085, Vandenberg Air Force Base
Derek had found the perfect location in satellite images from an online map service. South on Highway 1 and past the Vandenberg Air Force Base, on the righthand side there was a small, hidden exit. From the exit, a small dirt road ran northwest. It ended at a natural plateau of public land that stood up to 200 meters above the surrounding area. The view from there fell directly on Vandenberg. From there it should be possible for him to reach his goal.
They reached the west coast around 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Akif had the idea to spend the rest of the day in Pismo Beach, a pretty but not too expensive beach town north of Vandenberg. Here, their old-fashioned vehicle wouldn’t be so noticeable among all the tourists. Derek purchased a large towel and a straw hat, laid out on the beach, and fell asleep. Akif and Gita explored the town and brought Derek food and drink now and then.
It was a beautiful last day in this world. Derek had no idea where he would be tomorrow, but he tried not to think about it too much. Of course, he hoped that he would see Mary again. But how could he be sure? He had to look reality in the eye. The chance for success was minuscule.
That, however, didn’t apply to the first part of the plan, up to the point of hiding away in the space elevator. He had downloaded all the details of the project from the NASA archives. It was just his luck that the tax-financed NASA had to disclose everything that their employees developed. The knowledge, financed by the taxpayers, was available to him too. Thus, Derek knew exactly how the capsule looked and where the perfect place for a stowaway would be. And he also knew the biggest problem he would have to solve: the space elevator would be precisely balanced in terms of weight. There would be problems if the capsule suddenly weighed 85 kilograms more. To keep his presence unknown, Derek would have to somehow reduce the capsule’s weight by the same amount as his body weight.
And now the time had come to put the plan in motion.
“The exit will be coming up very soon,” Akif said from the passenger seat.
He was tracking the vehicle’s location on his phone. Derek concent
rated and strained even more as he peered out in front of them. The truck’s headlights weren’t optimally adjusted, and fog had crept up onto the highway from the ocean. He saw a sign that pointed toward ‘Eagle’s Nest.’ That must be the exit, he thought. He had to step on the brakes hard, because the exit ramp was shorter than he was anticipating.
He turned the truck to the right. The map hadn’t warned them that there would be a gate. They were lucky that it was open.
“About 800 more meters,” Akif said.
“Okay.”
Derek drove along the dirt path. The broad overlook might attract lovers, he feared, or space travel fans who might want to watch the activities of Vandenberg. But they didn’t see anyone else. Maybe the fog had driven them all away.
The plateau opened up in front of them. The truck’s lights showed a large number of deep tire tracks. It looked like heavy-duty military vehicles also came along here regularly. Hopefully not tonight, Derek prayed. He steered the truck to the right side of the plateau, which had a boundary of bushes.
“So, I guess that’s it then,” he said as he set the parking brake, moved the gearshift to neutral, and switched off the engine.
“Yeah,” Akif said.
It was a strange situation. They had known each other for only a few days and yet had become friends. Derek was tempted to call it all off. They could drive home. He’d sell the farmhouse and move to the city. He could finally accept Isaac’s invitation to try his wife’s delicious cooking. Akif and Gita would surely not let him be lonely.
But then he would always think about Mary, and about the single chance that he hadn’t taken. Could he be happy under those conditions? He didn’t know for sure, but he couldn’t imagine it.
“So, time for goodbye,” he said, and took his hands off the steering wheel.
“I wish you all the best, from the bottom of my heart,” Gita said.
The Rift: Hard Science Fiction Page 23
