Away Saga

by Norman Oro

  The retrieval team then went to work. Their countless hours spent preparing for the task showed and to an unknowing observer, it would’ve seemed as though they’d been sending and receiving objects via the Allen field for years. Once it was clear that everything was okay, Dr. Gidsen turned on the auditorium’s radio and US-395’s modest get-together celebrating the probe’s successful launch began. Some food had been laid out on a table in the auditorium potluck style; and people were talking with one another about the launch as the retrieval team brought Gizmo from the sending room to the clean room.

  By then, Dr. Rys was eager to see the telemetry the probe had recorded. He excused himself from the gathering after several minutes, got the probe from the clean room and brought it to one of the work stations that flanked the entrance to the chamber. As he removed the probe’s casing to access its circuits, people gathered around him. He then very carefully connected a multimeter to the probe. Toggling through a series of switches in its circuitry while looking at the resulting measurements on the multimeter, he began taking down readings on his clipboard:

  Temp: Low=20ºF, High=23ºF

  Bar: Low=970 mb, High=980 mb

  Light: Low=1 lux, High=4 lux

  Duration: 30 minutes

  Perplexed, he noticed that the crowd had gone quiet. There was a good reason for that: Based on the readings, there was a snowstorm on the other side of the Allen field.

  Questions

  Looking at the telemetry, the probe launch seemed to be one of those cases where getting a set of answers simply led to even more questions. Fortunately, it was almost time for the weekly presentation, which was pushed back to accommodate sending the probe. Dr. Gidsen was scheduled for that week and was set to begin at 11:30am. It was a welcome break from puzzling over the data that Gizmo had recorded. Once it was time, US-395’s historian started giving an overview of where his work stood a little over a year after it had begun. Essentially, based on his initial findings, he was optimistic that Allen field driven technologies could one day be safely introduced in the United States and eventually in the rest of the world. However, the more far-reaching the technology, the more effort and expense would probably be required to achieve this. He felt a comparison to nuclear fission technology was instructive. Like the field generator, it was a technology with profound civilian and military applications. And although the existing balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union wasn’t ideal, it was at least fairly stable. Through concerted effort, the proliferation of weapons based on fission technology had been held in check and was being regulated. In Dr. Gidsen’s eyes, this was reason for cautious optimism regarding the eventual products of their own work.

  When it came time for questions, most people in the group wanted to know how the decision tree was coming along. Dr. Gidsen had recently begun one to diagram the different paths that field generator technology could take as it made its way out of the lab. Presently, there were several branches corresponding to possible field generator applications. Choosing any given branch led to yet more branches, which represented outcomes of exogenous events or additional decisions that needed to be made corresponding to that particular use of the technology. For example, choosing to focus on transportation-related uses of the technology was one of the very first branches on the diagram. Going down that particular branch eventually led to a fork in the tree that represented the uncertainty associated with whether field-generators could eventually supplant conventional shipping methods. The “No” outcome had a certain probability and resulted in decisions needing to be made regarding whether to explore other applications. The “Yes” outcome had a complementary probability and ended with estimates of the impact that such an innovation might have on various industries. Being quantitatively oriented, the team loved the chart. In fact, many on the technical staff had helped Dr. Gidsen estimate the probabilities assigned to some of its branches. As interesting as it was in its own right, in Dr. Rys’s mind, one of the most important uses of the decision tree was also to encourage looking beyond experimental results in order to better understand the consequences of their research.

  By the time Dr. Gidsen finished answering the team’s questions, it was about two in the afternoon and time for lunch. Given the circumstances, it seemed fitting to have it as a group. Dr. Rys corralled everyone together to treat them to lunch at the diner. Though it was very warm outside, Pueblo’s sidewalks were heavily shaded with mesquite trees and it was only a ten minute walk away. Once they got there, they saw that the day’s lunch special was a roast beef sandwich, french fries and apple pie a la mode for dessert. Dr. Rys opted for the lunch special rather than his usual. Still full from the potluck earlier in the day, many just ordered the apple pie. Despite, or perhaps because of, the day’s events, no one had any problems not mentioning the probe or the data it had recorded. Since they didn’t talk about work during lunch, less conventional topics often arose. When Dr. Rys broached that he’d been having exceedingly vivid dreams recently incorporating experiences dating all the way back to when he was a boy, Guy Pool mentioned that in certain Native American cultures, dreams were considered a source of guidance. At that, a look of recognition seemed to dart through Dr. Rys’s eyes. As much to himself as to anyone else, he then murmured that there might be something to that idea. The group conversation then slowly wended its way through the recent approval for Alaskan statehood and then onto the Dodgers, who’d just moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn. Most everyone at the table was a fan and they spent over an hour animatedly debating their new baseball team’s prospects.

  As lunch wound down, it seemed to be an anticlimactic end to their year-long push to build and launch the probe. The intervening months had been filled with long days in the auditorium culminating in the several bits of telemetry that Dr. Rys had jotted down onto his clipboard just hours earlier. All that hard work seemed to have led the team to a riddle. Being of an intellectually vigorous bent, everyone on US-395 knew it came with the territory. In fact, that was part of the allure; working in a field that didn’t even exist just several years earlier.

  By four in the afternoon, everyone was back in the auditorium. The medical team had begged off on going to lunch in order to conduct a chemical assay of the air sample from the probe. Dr. Rys received their results shortly after he returned and despite what appeared to be unusually high concentrations of oxygen with relatively little argon, it was definitely breathable Earth air: mostly nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide and argon. At least there didn’t appear to be any surprises there.

  Since it was Friday, the unspoken rule was that it was alright to head out early. By 7pm, the auditorium was empty except for the team’s physicists. Dr. Rys, Dr. Marshall, Dr. Bishop and Dr. Sharp were still reviewing the probe’s telemetry and the data from the sensors. There was nothing definitive as they began wrapping up their discussion, but the consensus seemed to be that they simply needed the probe to take more readings. For the telemetry to differ so much from what they’d recorded earlier suggested that something else was at work; and to get to that something, they instinctively sought more information. It was a reasonable instinct. Nevertheless, they kept working with the numbers they already had, hoping for some insight. It was nine in the evening when the last person turned off the lights, left the building and headed home.

  Dr. Rys always enjoyed the walk to his car at the end of the week regardless of whatever difficulties may have beset him beforehand. Because it was such a small town, Pueblo was invariably quiet even on Friday nights. This made the simple task of walking through the parking lot an experience that was completely uncluttered and singular. For instance, there was nothing to dilute the feeling and the sound of his shoes striking the pavement; and he was therefore vividly aware of his every action and every sensation during his short journey to his car. Also, once he arrived and opened the door, the thought of driving home usually brought with it a sense of anticipation. After spending most of the week in Pueblo,
Pasadena once again felt brand new.

  That evening, he pulled into his driveway just after 12:15am to see the lights still on in the kitchen. He found Abigail inside waiting for him with some good news: She was going to interview for a faculty position at Pomona College in a couple of weeks. It was as excited as Dr. Rys had seen his wife in years and they talked about it well into the early morning. He decided he wouldn’t work that Saturday, so they had a late breakfast together and walked around Lake Avenue until mid-afternoon. It was a nice day, warm, mild and clear.

  When they returned home, they found that they’d received letters from their sons. The first was from Juan, who was now a private first-class and had recently been stationed in Germany with the 24th Infantry Division. Though he couldn’t provide much in the way of details, he wrote that things were going well and that his division was very busy, hinting at a major operation. He closed the note by giving his love to his parents. Pedro was spending his summer in Arlington, VA in an internship funded by the National Science Foundation. Though he missed California, he wrote to let them know that he was enjoying the project he was on and was learning a great deal. It was a very good weekend. By Monday morning, Dr. Rys felt reinvigorated and was eager to try to figure out what had happened with Gizmo.

  Jalama

  Dr. Marshall spent most of Saturday trying to figure out what had happened with Gizmo. He’d seen the telemetry from the preliminary launches when it seemed as though the Allen field was consistently sending objects someplace not unlike Pueblo just before sunrise: someplace mild and very pleasant. It was nothing like the snowstorm that the probe had apparently just returned from. He puzzled over it for hours until he almost literally exhausted himself and couldn’t think about it anymore.

  Reflexively he then turned to the upcoming day. He was going for a surf at 6am with Dr. Gidsen and Guy Pool at Jalama Beach Park in Santa Barbara County. In the back of his mind, he hoped that perhaps being in the water might trigger some kind of epiphany regarding what had happened with the probe. If anything, it was at least an opportunity to reconnect for a little while with life outside of the project. He was looking forward to surfing then spending the rest of the day with his girlfriend, Victoria, who was studying chemistry at UC Santa Barbara.

  After sleeping for a couple of hours, he woke up, had a sandwich, drank some coffee and was out the door at just past 1:30am. It was around a four hour drive and Dr. Marshall was eager to get going. He put his towel, wetsuit and beloved Velzy single-fin into the bed of his pickup then headed off. Taking his time driving and enjoying whatever scenery his headlights afforded him, he then turned on the heater. He’d slept longer than usual the night before and was glad he did as he finally arrived in Santa Barbara. Although it was half past four in the morning, he was wide awake. As he neared the park’s car lot an hour later, he didn’t realize just how much colder it was until he rolled down his window to get some air. At somewhere around 50ºF, it was almost freezing by California standards. He immediately rolled his window back up and decided that he’d stay in his truck for a while to watch the break after he parked. Frankly he didn’t expect much. Rincon didn’t get going until fall at the earliest, so Jalama was the main option in the area during summer. He’d heard that it could get good, but it was a beach break. Consequently, in his estimation, it was probably just as prone to delivering heaving close-outs as it was to having anything rideable. Driving around, he saw the lot was still empty. As he pulled into a space, he remembered that the tide would probably be on the high side; however, since Jalama was a beach break, that might actually improve the wave.

  Once he turned his engine off, he looked over to his side to see if it was any good. He’d been hearing rumors for days that there might be some southwest groundswell coming in. Based on what he saw as he peered out towards the lineup from his pickup, the southwest had arrived. Jalama was firing. As far out as he could see, sets of waves came marching in, beautiful A-frames gliding in unison out of the horizon towards shore, slowly unraveling from the inside out. There seemed to be no wind to speak of. It was like watching a shifting expanse of liquid glass.

  He immediately bolted out of his truck, grabbed his towel, wrapped it around his waist and put on his wetsuit as quickly as he could. He then took his surfboard and sprinted out towards shore, ignoring the bite of the cold early morning air and the sting of the asphalt jabbing into his feet. He’d spent an hour Saturday evening diligently melting new layers of paraffin wax onto the deck of his surfboard and rubbing sand into them to provide some grip. This was fortunate because after only a few minutes in contact with the cold water that morning, the wax hardened and did very little on its own to provide any traction. The sand, though, was just enough to keep him on his board as he made his way out. Any thoughts of US-395 quickly receded along with the shoreline.

  As he paddled out, he saw that through a combination of tide, sandbars and swell Mother Nature had turned that stretch of ocean into a sort of wave machine that morning. Glassy shoulder to head-high waves glided in, one after another, breaking at the same spot over and over again with an almost mesmerizing tedium, leaving just enough of an interval to kick out, paddle back to the same spot, sit, and wait for the next set. And there was no one else out. Even when Dr. Gidsen and Guy Pool joined him about a half hour later, Jalama was still otherwise empty.

  They took turns sharing waves. Out of reverence for the forces animating the water that morning with such utter skill, hardly anyone spoke. If they made any sound at all, it was only speechless laughter shared with one another at their own inexplicable luck. And their reticence was rewarded with two hours of perfect surf. After that, it felt like it was time to leave. They’d been unexpectedly graced with a type of perfection and, as if to honor some unspoken covenant, it was time for them to go. Emerging from the water, they simply agreed to surf Jalama the following weekend, walked to their cars then went their separate ways.

  Bell Curve

  Monday morning saw everyone at work earlier than usual and by 7:30am, all of US-395 was in the auditorium. Dr. Sharp and Dr. Bishop were chipping away at identifying the particles the Allen field had generated; and Dr. Marshall was working with Dr. Rys to reconcile the readings from the probe with their prior telemetry. Building on the informal consensus they’d reached on Friday, Dr. Rys was leaning towards launching Gizmo multiple times to see whether it was a question of luck. Perhaps the conditions on the other side of the Allen field varied more than they thought and the probability of an object materializing in extreme conditions obeyed some sort of statistical distribution. They consulted Dr. Montain, US-395’s mathematician, and he felt that it was a reasonable hypothesis. For example, it was possible that they just happened to draw a highly improbable observation at the extreme end of a Bell Curve, or whatever the applicable distribution was, on the very first probe launch. Trying to strike a balance between what was mathematically ideal versus what was feasible, he believed that a sample of several hundred observations would provide a reliable estimate of how frequently they could expect the extreme conditions that the probe encountered. Given how quickly they were nearing sending a human passenger, the decision to proceed with the sample was one of the easiest Dr. Rys had ever made.

  They began the probe launches in mid-July and concluded them at the end of the year. To locate where Gizmo was being sent, Dr. Rys had finished building a short-wave radio beacon into the probe. As with the earlier telemetry, they varied the duration of time that Gizmo was sent, ranging anywhere from twelve minutes up to almost fourteen hours. They also varied the time of day when the probe was sent from as early as six in the morning to as late as seven in the evening. Every single reading was recorded and then graphed to see if there was any discernible pattern or statistical distribution. At over six hundred launches, the task was painstaking and repetitive, but essential. Everyone on the team consistently put in fifteen hour days. Gone were the customary Monday team lunches at the diner. Most people opted to eat at their desk
s instead. Weekly presentations were temporarily made optional and rescheduled to Sundays. The lights were on from 6am to 9pm in the auditorium Mondays through Saturdays with people inside diligently executing the cycle of prepping Gizmo to be sent, retrieving it after its mission, taking down its telemetry and then prepping it again. Holidays were no exception with four launches made on Christmas Day.

  Despite the grueling hours, there was little grumbling. They all wanted to find out what was on the other side of the Allen field; and they all believed that sending a human passenger was the surest way to do that. Each probe launch was therefore seen as another step taking them closer to that goal. To lighten the load and give the team something more immediate to look forward to, Dr. Rys required that everyone take two weeks of vacation in the middle of January to recharge. As a result, when the last observation was finally recorded on New Year’s Eve at 7:45 in the evening, the sense of accomplishment was almost tangible. After five and a half months of fifteen hour days, the sample was done.