Away Saga

by Norman Oro

  Sam Emerson grew up in Edison, NJ, the youngest among four brothers and five sisters. He was only a small boy when he first heard JFK’s call to public service; however, once he’d heard it, he knew what he wanted to do with his life. His desire for better weather led him to Los Angeles where he attended the University of California. Unlike Dr. Perez, the snow held no charm for him. He graduated with a degree in economics and fluency in three foreign languages. He then became a Peace Corps volunteer working primarily in the Caribbean and South America, which was where he met his wife, Ana. After two years, he joined the US Foreign Service where he met the future president while they were both posted to the embassy in London. They struck up a friendship that’s lasted for thirty-two years and counting. Sam Emerson rose through the ranks quickly. His calm and upbeat demeanor, along with his love of foreign languages and cultures, has been a steady ally throughout his career. After an ambassadorship to the United Nations and then to China, he got a phone call from an old friend from the Peace Corps and took a job on Wall Street with his hedge fund, Entero Capital. He spent several years there overseeing the expansion of investments into real-estate and small-to-medium sized businesses in Latin America and Asia. It was satisfying work and the pay was certainly generous; however, as he neared retirement, he found himself wanting to end his career the way it began. When the president asked him nine years earlier if he’d like to help him run his election campaign, he agreed. The rest, as they say, is history. He’s served as the president’s chief of staff through both of his terms in office, attaining a notable degree of longevity in arguably one of the most demanding posts in the nation’s capital.

  During his daily meeting with the president, he brings him up to speed on the day’s events. Regarding US-395, he reports that things are somewhat mixed so far. Dr. Perez found the remaining team members and they’re headed to Edwards Air Force Base to rendezvous with Secretary Davies; however, the building that once housed the project seems to be a dead-end. He’s scheduled a virtual conference for later that evening to get a better picture of US-395 from the people who originally worked on it.

  They then briefly discuss their own string of good luck with the press being fixated on the upcoming transition of power rather than on the fact that a couple of senior White House officials are gallivanting around the country talking to retired university professors and looking around abandoned government buildings. At some point, though, the press needs to be informed; and they map out options for disclosing what they know to the American people. Aside from leaner government, transparency was one of the pillars of the president’s campaign. Unfortunately, US-395 has far-reaching implications that complicate what would otherwise be a straightforward press conference. The briefing he was given that morning showed that in the wrong hands, the technology could easily become a devastating weapon. In fact, just the news of its existence could initiate an arms race. And on top of that, there is the transition to a new administration to deal with. One thing seems certain: Despite the president’s best efforts, his second term won’t end uneventfully.

  Edwards Air Force Base

  With the virtual conference scheduled for 8pm Pacific Standard Time, Secretary Davies walks into the air base meeting room to see everyone already there. Dr. Perez then introduces her to Professor Minon, Guy Pool and Dr. Marshall, who’s working at his laptop. She chats with them briefly then excuses herself to get something to eat. Thankfully there are sandwiches, chips and soda on the table. Neither she nor Dr. Perez has eaten the entire day. The room is arranged like any other conference room except that there are only chairs on one side of the table. Instead of empty chairs on the other side, there’s a bank of four large high-definition monitors.

  Taking a seat, Secretary Davies rejoins the group’s conversation. Moments later, the screens opposite them blink to life, revealing an incredibly sharp, nearly three-dimensional image of the Oval Office. Once the president enters with his chief of staff, everyone instinctively stands. After the president requests that they be seated, the meeting begins; and Dr. Perez summarizes what’s known so far about the project. When the president asks for more detailed information from the original project team members, Dr. Marshall directs him to the presentation he’s uploaded to the White House virtual conferencing site. He then opens up the deck and begins walking everyone through the US-395 Interchange project.

  2

  In old days

  Dr. Marshall

  Science coursed through Jeremy Marshall’s veins. The son of a UCLA physics professor, he knew from an early age that he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. Growing up in nearby Brentwood, he went to UCLA himself and then to Caltech in Pasadena for graduate school. Blessed with a prodigious intellect and work ethic, he earned his PhD in three years, completing a dissertation on quantum mechanics that examined the implications of non-locality. Dr. Alberto Rys, who was teaching one of Jeremy’s seminars at the time, headed a government research program that needed a quantum physicist. The Department of Commerce funded the project in a small town just outside of Los Angeles County called Pueblo. If he could tolerate the secrecy and relative isolation the program temporarily operated under, Dr. Rys told him that he’d have a chance to help make history. He joined a few days after graduation.

  Even many years later, Dr. Marshall still vividly remembered his first day in Pueblo. He arrived on Sunday, July 6th, 1958 just past three o’clock in the afternoon in his blue 1950 Ford F1 pickup. He’d driven in from Santa Barbara where he’d spent most of Independence Day, Saturday and Sunday morning with his girlfriend, Victoria Stillwell. Immediately he noticed that Pueblo was a small town that, remarkably enough, had its own nuclear reactor. Just two years earlier, the first commercial nuclear power plant went online in England. Yet, here was a state-of-the-art nuclear reactor in a city that couldn’t have been much larger than Brentwood. He drove past the town square on to his apartment where he unpacked then stepped outside again to get a feel for the place. After walking a couple of miles through serene tree-shaded streets back towards the public square, he went into a diner where he had a cheeseburger, some french fries and a soda. Being in the middle of the desert, he spent the rest of the day in his apartment with the air-conditioning on, listening to records and doing some reading. Though it already felt like home, it was difficult to relax. He was anxious to start work.

  When he spoke with Dr. Rys the previous week, he was told very specifically to get there a few minutes after 9am on Monday, no earlier. However, when he got out of his truck at five minutes past nine and walked to the address he’d been given, he found himself in front of the town post office. Dr. Marshall must have walked around the block a half-dozen times thinking there’d been a mistake and looking for the right building before deciding to finally step inside. He stood patiently in line with customers and parcels; and spent most of the ensuing wait trying to find the best way to phrase his question. “Hi, can you please tell me where the secret government science project is?” seemed problematic. Once he got to the window, he settled on, “I’m looking for Dr. Rys’s office. Do you know where I can find him?” To his relief, he was given directions to go downstairs and knock on the first door to his right. He walked down a very long flight of steps that ended at a metal door and after a few quick knocks, Dr. Rys answered.

  Entering the facility for the very first time, he saw that it wasn’t quite what he expected. Half-jokingly, he noted to himself that it didn’t look like anything out of Forbidden Planet. Despite that, there was little mundane about it. The project site was a cavernous auditorium that housed at its center an equally imposing tent that was about the size of his apartment building. Its outlines vaguely reminded him of a giant bolt set down on its side with a metallic-colored shroud thrown over it. The left end was higher than the right, and surrounding it was a thicket of what seemed to be sensors. It must’ve been at least twenty-five feet tall. Dr. Rys led him to a circular table away from the bustle around the tent and invited him to
take a seat.

  He then received an introduction to the project that bordered on the surreal. Dr. Alberto Rys, distinguished quantum physicist, eccentric yet brilliant by all accounts, considered a peer of Niels Bohr’s and Albert Einstein’s, had found a way to teleport matter. Understated scientist that he was, he preferred to call it “sending” matter. The project ironically had begun several years earlier as the result of a lab accident. Its applications seemed so promising that he later arranged for a demonstration to the Department of Commerce’s transportation chief. The response was overwhelmingly positive and when he provided a cost estimate to scale up his research, he got funding. Since then, the technology had progressed to the point where Dr. Rys felt confident that they could begin sending lab animals fairly soon and people after that. In fact, human passengers could be sent as early as 1960. The project’s official codename was the US-395 Interchange, which echoed the designation of a nearby highway. As for the nuclear reactor Dr. Marshall saw, over 99% of its energy powered a machine the size of a baseball field housed hundreds of yards beneath them. That machine, codenamed the Maytag, generated something called an Allen field, which made teleportation possible. After years of excavation and construction, its initial test runs teleporting a newly built probe would start in a few days. He grinned then patted Dr. Marshall on the shoulder, telling him that he’d joined just in time.

  Unfortunately, Dr. Marshall’s mind was elsewhere. He felt light-headed. Dr. Rys must’ve witnessed similar reactions before because just as Dr. Marshall was beginning to notice how he must’ve looked, he was gone, off near the tent speaking with someone from his team. Looking back, Dr. Marshall realized that he wanted to give him some time to collect himself. About a half hour later, Dr. Rys returned to the table bearing a glass of orange juice. Once he saw Dr. Marshall was okay, he introduced him to the rest of the team.

  It was an eclectic group made up primarily of physicists, engineers and physicians. Including Dr. Marshall, there were now a dozen of them, which was just enough to meet the project’s ambitious timetable, while still maintaining its secrecy. A team member who neither fit the mold of doctor, physicist nor engineer was Guy Pool. He was about the same age as Dr. Marshall and was just four years out from Williams College, where he’d studied religion. He’d spent most of the past few years traveling around the world, living among religious and spiritual types. Although he was listed as an administrator on the project, he was treated with a deference reserved for many of the more senior staff. It was only later that Dr. Marshall found out why.

  Once the introductions were complete, Dr. Rys showed him inside the tent. Like the auditorium that housed it and US-395 itself, it was unceremoniously extraordinary. Opposite the entrance were hazardous-materials suits, fire extinguishers, barrels of detergent, a lab bench and some medical equipment. Alongside that, there was also a rack filled with what appeared to be pistols and rifles. Anticipating his questions, Dr. Rys softly murmured, “Precautions, Jeremy. Just precautions.”

  As they neared the middle of the tent, Dr. Marshall saw a very solid-looking metal table with a chair facing perpendicular to the entrance. On the table were a metal box and a monitor for what appeared to be a closed-circuit television system. At the end of the tent, facing the chair, was a wide metal wall flanked by two lab stations. In the middle of the wall was a large rectangular vault-door that was around twelve feet tall and almost as wide. To the right of the metal wall were two makeshift buildings that resembled over-sized trailer homes. The door to the makeshift building closest to them was open and as they approached the vault-door, Dr. Marshall could vaguely make out chairs and lab benches inside. Dr. Rys told him it was the lab room, where much of the scientific and engineering work was done. The building to the right of it, the admin room, housed desks for each team member and was where most of the number-crunching and clerical work took place.

  The sections of the facility behind the metal wall were known collectively as the chamber. Once they got to the vault-door, Dr. Rys spun a combination into it and turned a wheel at its center to open it. Dr. Marshall observed that the door was around two feet thick. Noticing his reaction, Dr. Rys off-handedly remarked that the entire chamber was built to the tolerances of a Mosler vault. Dr. Marshall didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded impressive.

  Once the door opened, he immediately noticed how much cleaner the air felt that was now escaping into the tent behind them. The room they were entering was in fact called the clean room. Within, there was a metal bench bolted to the floor and lockers situated into the walls to his right and to his left. He also saw a closed-circuit television camera above the lockers, at which point Dr. Rys mentioned that every room in the chamber was equipped with one. Directly opposite the entrance, about twenty feet away, Dr. Marshall saw a large, thick glass wall with metal meshed into it. With effort, he could vaguely make out what was on the other side, but not clearly. At the center of the glass wall was a door nearly identical to the one they’d just stepped through. They walked up to the door within the glass wall and Dr. Rys entered another combination. The door opened to reveal a duplicate steel-mesh glass wall and a duplicate door about fifteen feet away. Dr. Rys entered another combination. Despite what he’d seen and learned about US-395 up to that point, Dr. Marshall was nevertheless surprised at what he saw on the other side of the entrance once Dr. Rys opened it.

  It was a studio apartment. A nice studio apartment. The room was packed with amenities including a stove, refrigerator, bed, shower, bathroom, recliner, sofa, radio, color television, record player, magazines, books, plants and a cabinet pre-filled with clothes. Appropriately enough, the project team had informally dubbed it the “bachelor pad”.

  After walking through another pair of heavy doors they entered what appeared to be a large shower room. There were plants hanging from the ceiling, and off to the corner were a bed and clothes cabinet, both smaller than the ones in the bachelor pad. Aside from towels, the shower stall also had dispensers for cleaners. To the right was a sliding metal door, which led to a state-of-the-art operating room. It was dormant, but Dr. Rys noted that everything was very much in working order. The room also had a lab bench, which could be used to run medical tests. Walking back into the shower room and going to the right led to the final pair of heavy doors. Unlike the rest of the chamber, the final door was set into a solid metal wall.

  Once through, Dr. Marshall found himself in a large empty room. It was the last one in the chamber and was where objects were placed to be sent. There were no plants or furniture. Surprisingly the floors were made of wood as were the walls, and the ceiling was a sky blue. The room felt cool; nothing uncomfortable, but the drop in temperature was noticeable. Despite its austerity, it was very pleasant and soothing inside. In fact, it somewhat reminded him of a zendo. He’d taken a world cultures course at UCLA years earlier, and a classmate of his was a Zen Buddhist from Japan, who once brought the class on a field trip to one. He wasn’t fluent in English, but Dr. Marshall vividly remembered how his parsimonious way of talking at times conveyed meanings that eluded simple eloquence. During that visit, when asked what they did at the zendo, he thought about it for a moment then simply responded, “Here we sit.” In that zendo they sat and in this room they sent. With that, Dr. Rys concluded the tour and led him out of the chamber, mindfully closing each door along the way.

  Once they were seated again at the table just outside of the tent, Dr. Marshall received an overview of the rooms he saw and their functions. It seemed to be the embodiment of the maxim, “Hope for the best, expect the worst.” He learned that each section of the chamber was hermetically sealed from every other and had its own oxygen supply. Furthermore, there were several back-up power generators to ensure that none of the rooms would ever be without air. Since so little was known about how sending worked, precautions were taken against a range of extremely unfortunate, though, as Dr. Rys took great pains to emphasize, improbable outcomes. The primary concern wasn’t little gree
n men so much as earthly diseases. In particular, Dr. Rys worried about inadvertently bringing in something from a far-off ecosystem that would go on to trigger an epidemic in the United States.

  With that in mind, as soon as a human passenger was brought back to the sending room from a mission, they’d go to the shower room to wash themselves down. The sending room would then be heat-sterilized. With a protective coating applied to its walls and floor, it was capable of withstanding temperatures well over 300ºF. Dr. Rys anticipated that the passenger would then stay in the shower room for at least one day under observation, which was why there was a bed and change of clothes there. The walls were made of steel-reinforced Pyrex to facilitate observation, while the plants helped to remove any airborne pathogens that might have been brought along. If the passenger had been injured, the emergency room was nearby and one of the team physicians he’d met earlier was a surgeon.

  Once cleared by the medical team, the passenger would go into the bachelor pad where they’d be observed for several days. From time to time, physicians wearing hazardous materials suits could go in to run physicals. To sterilize the heat-proofed hazmat suits the double-door areas between the rooms could also be heated to over 300ºF. In addition to periodic exams, the medical team could sample and test the air within any part of the chamber at any time for pathogens. Once they confirmed everything was okay, the passenger would be released. The protocols were developed and reviewed by some of the best minds in modern biology and medicine, who deemed them to be more than sufficient.