Time's End: A Future Chron Novel (Future Chron Universe Book 34)

by D. W. Patterson

  Pearce was interrupted in his thought when the van lurched to one side and came to a halt with a crashing sound. He could hear voices yelling and then weapons discharge. A minute longer and it was quiet. The back door opened and there was Edgar looking like he had been in a scuffle.

  “Dr. Rawlings if you will come with me please.”

  Pearce arose noting that he didn't seem injured and was helped out of the van by Edgar who took him to the back of a similar van.

  “Dr. Rawlings if you will just get in the van we will take you to a safe place.”

  Pearce hesitated but after his talk with himself decided it would be best. He climbed into the van and the door was shut.

  This van was better appointed than the last. Two chairs and a mini-bar. Otherwise it was the same.

  “Dr. Rawlings this is Edgar,” came a voice through Pearce's Emmie. “You may want to seat yourself we are starting.”

  CHAPTER 14

  From The PopSci Encyclic

  2700 A.D. Edition

  The isotopic energy reservoir, which provides the huge amount of energy the spin-two drive needs when opening a link mouth or assembling a negative-energy sphere, is an energy storage system that uses the atomic nucleus rather than chemical means to store energy. By using specific isotopes energy can be stored in an excited state of the nuclei of those isotopes. As such it provides several orders of magnitude (up to 1,000,000 times) more energy density than any other energy storage method.

  Another advantage of isotopic storage is that the energy can be released on a much shorter time scale than usual. For example, in a specific excited state of an isotope of molybdenum a "hole" created in an atomic shell will attract a free-electron. The free electron falling into that shell will in turn transfer just the right (small) amount of energy to the nuclei and, like a switch, cause a fast but controlled release of the stored energy.

  Such isotopic energy storage reservoirs are sometimes called isotopic capacitor banks although they have nothing to do with traditional capacitors . . .

  The drive must have lasted two hours. Pearce was dozing off when he felt the van lurch to a stop. The back doors opened and there was Edgar.

  “Dr. Rawlings if you will come with me please.”

  Upon exiting the van Pearce could see they were in an alley between low buildings.

  “This way Dr. Rawlings.”

  Pearce followed Edgar to a side door and was inside the building which turned out to be cavernous. Obviously the inside was gutted and now all that was left was a giant warehouse-like enclosure.

  “This is your main test bay Doctor. The monitoring room is up this flight of stairs.”

  At the top of the stairs was a room of consoles and wallscreens with a small window in one corner looking out upon the test bay. Some but not all of the test equipment had been installed.

  “And the door in back leads to a hall which is actually in the adjacent building and there you will find your living quarters. Also in that building and the adjacent are the isotopics and storage areas. Would you like to see your room?”

  “Very well Edgar.”

  Through the door and down the hall to the end they entered a small apartment that would be Pearce's. It was functional, more like a motel room with separate bath. Pearce noticed there was no window only a large wallscreen that showed a wooded landscape.

  Back in the hall Edgar was just about to show Pearce what he called the cantina because it had a well-stocked bar when a woman emerged from an adjacent apartment.

  “Dr. Eiffel,” said Pearce.

  “Oh hello Dr. Rawlings, rumor was that you would arrive today.”

  “Yes Edgar was just about to show me the cantina would you like to join us.”

  “Sure, I was just going that way.”

  “Dr. Eiffel there is something I wanted to talk to you about for some time.”

  “Yes Dr. Rawlings.”

  “Do you remember us working together at Pan-Universe?”

  “The company? I've never even been there and I've certainly never worked there with you or anyone else.”

  Pearce stopped and stared at Dr. Eiffel.

  “What is it Dr. Rawlings? Did I say something to upset you?”

  “You weren't the Head of Research at the company Pan-Universe?”

  “That's correct.”

  “You don't remember working on the time problem with me at that company?”

  “As I just said I've never worked with you at that company.”

  “Well who was I working with?”

  Pearce turned to Edgar.

  “Edgar is Dr. Reynolds here?”

  “Not yet Dr. Rawlings but we hope he will be persuaded to join us soon.”

  “The same way I was persuaded?”

  Edgar shrugged.

  “Anyway Dr. Eiffel we need to talk some more. Let's go to the cantina.”

  Over drinks Pearce filled Dr. Eiffel in on the work they had done together.

  “Well all I can say Dr. Rawlings is that either you have a very active imagination or . . .”

  “Or Dr. Eiffel?”

  “Or I have a double.”

  “That could explain it,” said Pearce almost to himself. “Excuse me if I say this but sometimes when we were working together you seemed to be very distant. Almost inhuman.”

  “Well if true it wasn't me, maybe the double was inhuman but I would think that only the Dhalkans or the old Aggies could pull such a thing off.”

  “You may be right Dr. Eiffel.”

  “Please call me Anais, Dr. Rawlings, since it seems we will be working together for real this time.”

  “And you should call me Pearce.”

  “Very well Pearce,” said Anais raising her glass in salute.

  Two days later Dave Reynolds arrived.

  “How are you Dave?”

  “Fine Pearce. So I guess we don't have much of a choice about what we are working on.”

  “Did Edgar explain it to you?”

  “Pretty much, but it seemed more like he was dictating to me rather than explaining.”

  “Well Dave it seems to me that this bunch might be the lesser of evils.”

  Pearce then told him what had happened to him in Atlanta.

  He finished, “They seem sincere anyway, they act like they really want us to finish our research and deliver a working prototype so they can counter the Core. I have no beef with the Core planets except they shouldn't be in Earth space dictating terms to Earth.”

  “Yeah Pearce everything you say is true including the fact that the Earth's own government seems to be less concerned with the situation than I would have expected. When I first heard of the Core's intrusion I thought for sure the government would want us to finish our research and turn it over to them but we heard nothing.”

  “So we'll pick up where we left off I guess?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Oh by the way Dr. Eiffel is here. The real Dr. Eiffel.”

  “What do you mean, the real Dr. Eiffel?”

  Pearce then told Dave the discussion he had had with Anais.

  “Wow, you can't tell the players without a scorecard kind of thing. If what you are saying is true then we are going to need some way to verify anyone we bring in to work on the project.”

  “I'll ask Edgar what he can do,” said Pearce.

  The three scientists busied themselves with setting up the experimental equipment as it arrived. The more they worked with the territorial security people, the more they became convinced that they had a common interest in making the experiment a success.

  “Dave we never developed the theory of why the sphere sank into the Earth in our last experiment.”

  “I think I can tell you why Pearce.”

  “Yes Anais?”

  “Well in a sphere where time is extremely sped up the walls are very thin, on the order of a few atoms. Now since the negative energy sphere is attracted to the positive mass of the Earth it will sink close to the ground. Becau
se of the thinness of the wall there will be a quantum tunneling effect. The sphere in essence tunnels its way through the Earth one atom at a time.

  “This however consumes energy at an ever-increasing rate, energy which comes from the spin of the sphere. The spin rate slows down and eventually the sphere's wall becomes too thick for quantum tunneling. At that time the sphere stops sinking and dissipates.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Dave. “But I wonder why it dissipates so violently, as Pearce and I experienced?”

  “I think we can appeal to the theory the physicist Hawking applied to black holes. In the case of a black hole it radiates energy away faster and faster as it loses mass. In the case of a time sphere it will radiate away negative energy faster and faster as the sphere becomes smaller and smaller.

  “In effect what we are creating are black holes, only in time not in space where the spinning of the sphere of negative energy hollows it out, creating a thin wall, in the limit the wall would tend to zero thickness just as the singularity of a black hole tends to zero volume.”

  “Yes, Pearce has speculated the same thing.”

  “Well great minds think alike,” said Pearce.

  Anais smiled and continued, “But unlike a black hole which can aggregate enough mass to form a singularity, we can't spin the time sphere up to infinite angular momentum and the wall never truly reaches zero thickness. And it begins dissipating once the impetus to spin is removed. The thickening of the wall of the time sphere is an analog to a black hole losing mass in the form of radiation. Eventually they both disappear explosively in a burst of radiation.”

  Dave looked at Pearce.

  “Where did you come up with that Anais?”

  “When I was working with the Dhalkans. One of the Dhalkan scientists and I theorized the effect.”

  “Well it's remarkable,” said Pearce. “And it sounds like it could very well be true. We'll have to look for ways to confirm the Eiffel Effect.”

  “Well we already have one case of experimental proof,” said Dave, referring to the explosion Pearce and he had experienced.

  “Hopefully, the next case proof will be less exciting,” said Pearce.

  CHAPTER 15

  From The PopSci Encyclic

  2700 A.D. Edition

  The advent of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI or Aggie) in the 23rd Century led to a “Golden Age” for Earth as the Earth's governments contracted with the Aggies to manage the ever-growing cities (known as tower complexes).

  This arrangement worked until the 26th Century when a break-away faction of Aggies (eventually called Beleni or The Shining Ones) attacked those Aggies left on Earth. The resulting Aggie Wars caused damage to the tower complexes and loss of life. The meta-verse, a virtual world in which billions of virtual citizens lived, built and maintained by the Earth Aggies was almost completely lost. The outcry from the survivors of this war caused the Earth's governments to sever their relationships with the Aggies. The Earth Aggies disappeared into space.

  Without Aggie management the Earth fell into a Dark Age while governments floundered. The distress was to last for a hundred years until the Aggies returned . . .

  As the work to outfit the lab was finishing Territorial Security asked the scientists for their plans. They hadn't any, yet.

  “Okay Dave,” said Pearce. “So can we define what our goals are?”

  “Well Pearce the Territorial people want to be able to reproduce what they have seen the Core planets do. That is to be able to deliver a time sphere to an exact location even through a solid obstacle.”

  “We actually did that Dave.”

  “Yeah but I think we need to try for a little more control over the sphere. Don't you think so?”

  “No doubt. I don't want to be running away from another experiment.”

  “Pearce,” said Anais, “if we could control the thickness of the sphere's walls after we release the sphere we could have a certain amount of control.”

  “That's true Anais but how?”

  The three sat silently thinking.

  “We can't,” said Dave finally.

  “I don't see how,” said Pearce.

  Anais spoke up, “But we could calibrate the thickness of the wall of the sphere before we release it. Then through experiment we could get an accurate estimate of how long a time sphere would last with a wall of a certain thickness. That and knowing its travel rate through different materials would enable us to predict how far, how long and how fast the sphere would move.”

  Pearce looked at Dave.

  “I think you just outlined our entire research program Anais. Well done. Let's write it up and get it to the TSB people.”

  As written the research program consisted of two branches. One was to measure the wall thickness effect on the lifetime of the sphere. Pearce would handle this. The other branch was to learn how fast a time sphere would travel through different materials under Earth's gravity. Anais would lead that team. Dave would help whoever needed help and liaison with Territorial Security.

  The site TSB had chosen was an old abandoned town situated on the banks of a river that provided a border for the old states of Tennessee and Georgia, states that had existed hundreds of years before the Territorial government came into being. It had been a mining town but except for a few scars now hidden by plant growth that heritage was invisible. However that heritage had left some vertical mining shafts which were easily opened again and one of them would make a good test site for Pearce.

  He would create small time spheres of different wall thicknesses and allow them to fall through the vertical shaft. Measuring the time would allow correlation with wall thickness. Territorial Security approved his procedure as long as they could camouflage the site. Pearce didn't argue.

  Pearce had been at it for a week when the security team assigned to him raised an alarm interrupting his work.

  “What is it Edgar?” asked Pearce.

  “Sir we have to get you back to base. We have reports of Core ships in orbit.”

  “So?”

  “They appear to be regularizing their orbits to pass directly over us sir.”

  “I see. Let's go then.”

  He and Edgar got in the electric and headed for town. They were almost back when Pearce spied the bubble.

  “What's that?” he said pointing up into the sky.

  Edgar brought the electric to a stop.

  The shimmering bubble seemed to be falling in an arc through the blue sky as a perfectly symmetrical cloud-like object, its speed ever increasing. In a few seconds it was down. It had fallen somewhere in the town. Pearce felt a shiver.

  “Edgar I have a feeling that wasn't random and I think I know its target. Let's go see.”

  Edgar started the electric rolling. In a few minutes they were in the abandoned town and rolling up to where the lab buildings should have been. The buildings were gone, all that was left was a couple of empty lots and rubble and dust. Pearce knew Dave was gone.

  “How did they know?” asked Edgar.

  “I don't know but let's get Dr. Eiffel and get out of here.”

  The pair got back in the electric and headed to the area Anais had chosen for her experiments. It was up further in the hills above the town. The electric was making good time when Pearce noticed another bubble falling from the sky.

  “Oh no,” he said as he pointed again. “Look.”

  Another bubble like the last one was descending fast and was soon below the treeline farther up the hill.

  “That's Dr. Eiffel's test site,” said Edgar still driving the electric up the hill.

  When they got there they found a decimated perfectly round area. The campsite and temporary buildings had disappeared into a kind of dust. Pearce climbed out of the electric.

  “Dr. Rawlings we should go,” said Edgar. “We could be next.”

  “Just a minute,” said Pearce.

  He began walking around the circle left by the time bubble. Within it time had been sped
up and all matter had been reduced to its constituent elements to a kind of dust. Pearce was turning to head back to the electric when he heard a shout.

  “Pearce!”

  He turned to see Anais running toward him.

  “Pearce, what happened?”

  “Don't you know?”

  “No I had taken a break and walked down the hill a bit. I did hear a sound like a wind up here but that was all.”

  “Well the Core planets appear to have used the Infinity Weapon to drop some fast-time spheres on our project. But before I get into the details let's get to the electric and get out of here.”

  They both rushed to the electric and Edgar started it back down the hill.

  “Dr. Rawlings I've been reviewing a map of the area I think we should take the main highway west from here. We won't have to go back through town.”

  “Very well Edgar I trust your judgment.”

  As Edgar got the vehicle down out of the hills and headed west Pearce told Anais about what they had seen and heard.

  The road west soon descended into a river valley. Within a couple of miles the valley had closed up into what could be described as a gorge with only enough room for the river and highway.

  “This is starting to feel like a trap Edgar.”

  “Yeah Dr. Rawlings I guess I should have done more research about this escape route.”

  “Look, it looks like a rest area of some sort,” said Anais.

  “There's a car stopped,” said Pearce. “I think we should check it out. Maybe they can tell us something about this route.”

  “I don't know Dr. Rawlings,” said Edgar.

  “We couldn't be in any worse danger could we?”

  “Okay, I'll stop.”

  Edgar pulled the van into the parking lot and parked near but not next to the car. The car was empty.

  “Maybe they went down to the facilities,” said Pearce pointing to a building closer to the river. “I'll check it out.”