Mobius

by Garon Whited

  I’m not rushing into this. I’m taking my time and thinking it through. How can this go wrong?

  What happens on the far side of the gate? The Orb is out in space in a rocket and headed for a black hole. Do I want the Orb out there, loose like that, with—don’t ask me how, but humor me—a rocket it might potentially control? I’m not saying it can, but how do I know it can’t? It’s basically a psychic me with no filter and no sense of moral obligation. Ethical obligation. Responsibility. Whatever, it’s a ruthlessly self-centered, egotistical me. If I can figure out a way to stay out of a black hole—and I’d be pretty motivated to do so—I have to figure out a way to keep it from happening. If I have a rocket, how many ways could I make this plan go wrong?

  The number was depressingly high.

  Time for a rethink. Remember the K.I.S.S. principle. Keep It Simple, Stupid! How can I keep this as stupidly simple as possible?

  Houston, Texas

  It’s some alternate timeline where transistor radios are high-tech, cars are tiny and aerodynamic, and city buildings are all made of brick. There are other differences, of course. There’s a tendency toward straw hats and striped pants in men’s fashions, and Houston has a cool, refreshing sea-breeze. Cars are common and quite fast, but not jam-packed on the streets. Houston has a lot of public transportation and, strangely enough, most of it seems reasonably clean. The buses I expected, but I did not expect an extensive streetcar network. Did they have this sort of thing in my own world? Maybe I’ll go look, someday.

  One of the things I like about this place is the availability of wide, open spaces, as well as access to a heavily-urbanized environment. The first is ideal for experimenting. The second is ideal for late-night meals—usually from a butcher shop or slaughterhouse, but getting mugged is still an option.

  The other thing I like is the ready access to pipe. Large pipe. Thick and heavy pipe. I can buy steel pipe in just about any size and length I like. I can even have threading cut into the ends so I can screw the lengths of pipe together. And I do.

  I’m going as low-tech as I can manage. I’m also going as low-magic as I feel I can get away with. Here’s the plan.

  I have a nice little spot out in the middle of nowhere. It’s basically a barn a little way off what I think of as the I-10, but the locals call the Southern Highway. The barn sits in what was once a farm, but after the farmhouse burned, the acreage went to brush and some small trees. The gravel drive is really a pair of ruts through grass-like stuff tall enough to slap the hood. I love it, from the standpoint of nobody will bother me there. I’m not sure anybody will find me there.

  Yes, I have a house, as well. Yes, it’s more suburban. And yes, you better believe it has hot and cold running water. It’s a nice place to rest between test runs on my Orb-launcher, as well as an address for deliveries. Bronze parked her statue in the garage and occupied a pickup truck. She seems to like trucks, but has expressed the desire to wear something faster. I’ve promised to find something for her as soon as we’re done. For the time being, she’s been running back and forth between the house and the barn with me and loads of compressed air—I buy a tank of nitrogen and we haul it out with the new lengths of pipe.

  Firebrand is keeping an eye on the Zombie World lair, sort of a last line of defense if killer psychic zombies breach the spells shielding the place. I don’t want to pop back and find there are a dozen of the big ones waiting outside. I want even less to do so and be taken by surprise. I get a report every time I open a small gate, reach through, and swap out power crystals. It’s much cheaper than physically going there and coming back!

  So, the barn. I did a little hammering, a little mending, a little cloaking, and I think we’re good. It’ll stand up long enough for what I want, anyway. It also has a light-proof corner where I can lurk during my transformations without resorting to a full suit of armor. I don’t like going through the changes in the armor. It’s like wearing one of those fireproof silver suits and being shot with a flamethrower. Sure, I know I’m perfectly safe. It doesn’t make the experience any less unnerving.

  As for the Orb and how to dispose of it, I’ve been giving it some thought. I still like the idea of dumping it in a black hole. I simply don’t see how it can survive, but, magic. Even if it does survive, no one is going to go in there and get it! Eventually, even a supermassive black hole will decay to nothingness, but it will be a long, long time before that happens. I’m pleased with this.

  My plan is still the same as before: Park a gate as close as possible and throw the Orb through. However, since I can’t be totally sure of the relative motion of a brute-force gate, I want to launch the Orb, not merely toss it.

  I miss Diogenes. He could make a rocket for this. Or a railgun. I can’t. At least, I can’t do it without spending more time on R&D than I like.

  The problem with a rocket is the guidance. With a missile, it’s not too difficult. Missiles have vanes and fins for steering. These don’t work too well in the vacuum of space, however. There’s nothing out there, no atmosphere to push against. It’s all a case of thrust and the center of gravity. For space-based guidance, we have to either use a system of attitude jets—complicated and finicky—or a system of gyroscopes—also complicated and finicky. So, no rockets.

  Railguns are less complicated, but still finicky and hard to use multiple times. I want ranging shots, test shots, to make sure I’ve got a mechanism both fast-acting and reliable. Put a conductive shell around the Orb and it could, in theory, be launched with a railgun. The problem is, each shell in a test shot will wear heavily on the system, changing the dynamics. Worse, there are terrible problems in scaling up a railgun from the needle-shooter I built in high school to the twelve-inch-minimum launcher I’d need. The capacitors alone would take up the barn and a couple of railroad boxcars! Plus, someone would notice the massive amount of electricity being sucked out of the power grid.

  How about an actual cannon? It’s not a bad idea, but I would need to find a cannon—at least a twelve-inch gun. I can’t simply swipe one. People would talk. Plus, anything that big is going to be too heavy. Bronze could haul it for me, sure, but most guns of that size are naval guns, not portable artillery. And I’m not going to build one! Firing the thing creates breech pressures in the frightening range. I’d rather not test fire a homemade cannon and discover I was wrong about… well, anything.

  The idea of the gas pressure inside a cannon, though, gave me an idea.

  I have some sixteen-inch pipe, much larger than the Orb, slowly accumulating in the barn. I fire the thing as a test, add more pipe, and test it again. My test shots are with loaded sabots. Technically, the term “sabot” implies it will fall away at some point after I launch it. Maybe a better term is “coffin.” I’m sure it’ll come apart under the tidal stresses involved, but by then it should be too far down the gravity well to matter. The final version will be a wooden form made of two pieces with an Orb-shaped hollow in the center. It’s the same size as the pipe, or a little smaller, and sanded down smooth. I’ve also gone to some trouble to wrap it in cloaking and concealment spells. These will keep it hidden, yes, but they’re the cheap kind—they also block vision from inside. I don’t plan to tell the Orb anything, just load it, lock it in, and let it wonder what I’m doing.

  So, how do we launch this arrangement? Compressed air. I figure I’ll open a gate slightly larger than the pipe, slicing off the last little bit at the end. This should suck out all the air in the pipe, creating a vacuum. Behind the Orb, I’ll open up a heavy-duty dump valve, releasing the contents of six large air tanks. Without air resistance in front, the Orb will shoot down the barrel of my popgun like an artillery shell.

  It’s true the muzzle velocity will be minor compared to astronomical phenomena, but the launch will give me some control on where the Orb goes. Since the gate should be stationary, relative to the singularity, the net velocity of the Orb’s projectile should be only what I impart to it with the air cannon—and over time, g
ravity. If the Orb somehow breaks its containment and finds a way to influence its fall, I want it to have to overcome all of this.

  I’m testing my cannon every time I get a new length of pipe. There’s a Goldilocks zone as far as length of barrel is concerned and I’m slowly working my way up to it. I still have a stack of coffins ready to bolt together, as well as a number of sandbags to simulate the weight of the Orb. Between my math and my test firings, I think we’ll manage to be bang on target when the time comes.

  This has not been a quick and easy process. I’ve raided some of the power production in Zombie World and at the Cretaceous Lair to make this work, schlepping power crystals back and forth for charging. The local house has grid power, so it’s doing some charging, but it’s a residential circuit, not an industrial one, and only rated for about a hundred amps, I think. If the barn had grid power, I’d be using that, too. As it is, what few power panels I’ve built here seldom replicate. Their output is tasked with charging pipe-sized gates for testing. Sometimes, when the crystals are full, the power panels replicate, but the power crystals are only full when I’m about to fire another test shot.

  I could save power, of course, by picking a black hole in the local universe, but I’m feeling cautious. This universe still has life in it. I’m aiming at a universe farther along toward ultimate entropy—an older, more run-down universe. It has some really large black holes, too, from galactic gravitational collapse.

  The Orb will find itself blind and traveling ballistically through the vacuum of space on a collision course with one of the most voraciously destructive forces I can find in an ancient, dying universe. If the damned thing comes back to bother me after this, I may have to learn to live with it.

  Houston, Texas, January 11th

  Sorry for the delay. I’ve been busy, but I think I’m caught up, now. I’ve had a lot to do and I’ve been pretty focused on making things happen, rather than taking notes. Here’s a more coherent update.

  I mentioned the barn, didn’t I? Yes. So, inside the barn I have a smallish gate setup mounted on one wall. Down the length of the barn, there’s a lot of pipe. What happens in a test run is this: I load the Orb-substitute into the form. This goes in the opposite end of the pipe and I screw the whole arrangement together. It’s not exactly a breechloader, but it’s close enough. When I open the gate at the far end, it cuts off a little bit of the pipe, making sure the new end of the pipe is completely flush with the open gateway. Air gets sucked out of the pipe and into the vacuum of space.

  I had a little trouble with this. There isn’t a lot of air behind the form, but there is some. There’s wadding behind the projectile, so there’s a pretty good seal. Even a little air makes the whole thing move. So I only fire it at night, when I can hold a bit of the wadding aside and the form in place with my tendrils. Once this little bit of air vents away, the form sits there in a near-perfect vacuum.

  With the wadding released to form a good seal again, I hit the lever to open the valve. This vents the output from six large air tanks into the back end of my launcher. The result is on par with some cannon. High-pressure air launches my practice rounds pretty violently. They’ve got about a ninety percent survival rate in the violence of the launch, so I’m including a small momentum-absorbing spell, much like the one I use on arrows to avoid destroying them. The spell is deliberately fragile and designed to self-destruct once expended, so I don’t feel too bad about adding a bit of magic to the first two seconds after the launch.

  The key, though, is aiming the thing. It’s effectively a fixed gun emplacement. The aiming comes from precise targeting of the gate.

  I’ve tested the launcher. It works. It’s reliable. My worry is getting the gate exactly right.

  At least the tongs were easy. They were modified from a pair of ice tongs, used for handling big blocks of ice. Instead of the arms ending in points, though, they ended in circles, suitable for gripping a ball. I even covered them with rubber, to be extra grippy.

  Houston, Texas, January 19th

  So, my test shots gave me data, both on the ballistics of the singularity and my projectiles. I don’t have hard numbers, obviously, but my estimates and eyeballs tell me a lot about how to orient my gate for the final shot. Given how far away I have to park the thing because of wormholes and gravitational distortion, I’m still pretty sure we can score a hit on the event horizon. If not, it will at least join the accretion disk and spiral down.

  The accretion disk gave me some concerns. I’d rather drop the Orb of Evil as directly as possible. As long as it’s in orbit, it’s not gone. True, it will accelerate to nearly the speed of light as it whizzes around near the event horizon, causing it to experience drastic time dilation effects—but I don’t want it slowed down while the dying universe goes on around it. I want it inside the event horizon. I don’t know the Orb’s full powers, so I’m assuming the worst. The less it has to work with, the better.

  I’ve been parking my gate about fifteen degrees off the ecliptic and aiming for the center of mass. My test shots seem to bear out the idea we can avoid most of the space junk and go directly to Hell, do not pause in Purgatory, do not collect any karma.

  Meanwhile, back at the house on Camden Street, I’ve discovered a whole new issue. I picked a low-rent neighborhood—an older suburb slowly giving in to entropy. Cracked sidewalks, peeling paint, un-edged yards, old fences rusting, new security fences, all the usual signs of an area starting to decay. None of the windows are boarded up, but any storm coming in off the Gulf could cause the first one to be permanently sealed. I figured I wouldn’t be bothered by the local Welcome Wagon or a bunch of over-friendly neighbors. And, to be fair, no one has tried to pound on my door and demand to welcome me.

  On the other hand, someone did break into the house and steal stuff. Nothing irreplaceable, but it’s still annoying. Mostly they swiped cash, because everyone likes cash. I shouldn’t complain too much. I stole it from a bank vault in the first place. It does annoy me, though, and it makes me wonder who’s spending the money. Will anyone notice? Will there be questions asked? Is someone going to the police right now in hope of a reward?—while keeping the cash they stole, of course.

  Why is it things always go wrong toward the end of a project?

  Actually, I think I know why. When I have a major project, it takes time. The longer I spend on it, the greater the opportunity for things to go wrong. Plus, I tend to pick low-rent districts where crime is more likely. If there’s only a one percent chance for someone to burglarize my house every day, if I spend a hundred days, I’m probably getting burgled.

  At least it wasn’t nasty hobbitses. I know this for a fact. The pantry was untouched.

  Still, I suppose I should do something about this. First off, fix the window they broke to get in. Second, track down the money and find out how immediate the trouble is. Do I need to run for it and start over? Can I bring all my equipment and carry on with my plan elsewhere? Or can I finish up here before I have to leave? It’s important to know before I summon the Orb and launch it. If I’m going to have to deal with a SWAT team while firing an inter-universal air cannon loaded with an Orb of Awful at a collapsed galaxy, I want to know.

  I do not appreciate being diverted.

  Given the nature of the neighborhood, I figured it was a fair bet I could search for a bundle of hundred-dollar bills and get one major hit. Turns out I got three. Once I started scrying on them, it was easy to see why. One of them was what I can only describe as a “crack den” two blocks over. They had drugs, weapons, and money. If they were my thieves, their house could be easily sealed and burned to the ground. Firebrand was all for it, which didn’t help me overcome my foul temper. I’m trying to show restraint. Brutally murdering everyone in the house isn’t the proper response to a theft—but I wanted to. It was an obvious overreaction and it helped me to recognize that. Besides, I don’t like it when people burn down my house. I’ve been trying to avoid doing it to others.

  Th
e second and third hits, however, were the ones I wanted. The culprits were a pair of older black boys, about fourteen years old, I’d say. Half the money was under a mattress in one house, the other half was hidden under the floor in another. Both boys were obviously members of less-wealthy households, yet they now had brand-new shoes and elaborate jackets—fashion items, I assume. I didn’t see new bicycles, but the theft was earlier in the day, while I was out. They might not have had time to buy much with their loot. I suppose it’s possible they thought they were being cagey and clever by not spending too much at a time.

  The good news, at least, was a complete lack of involvement on the authorities’ part. The bad news was the inevitable involvement on the authorities’ part. Parents tend to notice when one of the kids starts sporting lots of new toys. Maybe the first one or two can be explained away as saving up allowance or from odd jobs, but after the second piece of expensive merchandise, someone’s getting interrogated.

  Is this my problem? No. I stomped down my temper and reminded myself to keep a low profile. If I raised a fuss, it would draw attention and delay my plans. Besides, I’m trying to keep my emotional balance and letting them rob me of that, as well, would be bad for everybody. Therefore, however reluctantly, I concluded they could keep the money. As long as I have enough time to launch the Orb, I’ll consider it cost of doing business.

  Maybe I should go do that, and right now.

  Houston, Texas, January 20th

  Power crystals? Charged up, and lots of them. Firebrand? Fetched back and on hand. Bronze? Snorting fire next to me. Armor? You bet. Cloak? On alert. Tongs of Ball Handling? Check.

  I need a different name for the tongs. Maybe later.

  Other assets, though—what about my altar ego? Nope, still silent. Well, you can’t have everything. Next up, I’ll build him some actual divinity dynamos and see if I can jump-start him.