by Peter Ponzo
Next morning Hagatha drove her BMW to the McBollocks store and waited for the arrival of Glow Bright. Upon the ornate table lay the hamburger, wrapped in golden foil, surrounded by lettuce leaves and fries with ketchup. When all eyes were on the stretch limousine that carried the beauty, Hagatha replaced the hamburger with one of her own, one that concealed the poisonous juices of a green papaya, a hamburger that would liquidate Glow Bright's beauty. There was a cheer as the beautiful one walked to the table, held up the hamburger for all to see then took a tiny bite. Then there was silence, then shock, then a great gasp went up from the crowd. Glow Bright was changing, her golden hair was turning grey, her pink skin becoming wrinkled and dry, her eyes flashing green, her body shrinking, stooping...an old hag appeared where once a beautiful woman stood. Hagatha was excited with the unfolding scene, so excited that she fell to the ground. Doctor's at the hospital said she died of an overjoyed heart.
Within days the images of Glow Bright were removed from TV ads, buses and billboards and companies severed their relations with the ugly girl and newspapers began to call her Glow Blight and Snow Fright. Yet, the ugly girl had money and when she saw that the old house was for sale, at the edge of town, on the top of a hill covered in dead trees, she bought it hoping to hide from the taunting crowd. In the decrepit house was a mirror. When she wiped the dust from the mirror, she saw that it held the image of a sleeping face.
The face immediately awoke and said: "Go ahead, ask me."
Chapter One
I usually slept in past noon, but this day was special. I had passed all the physical and psychological tests and was now eligible to fly the BNS01 as test pilot. Indeed, I was first in line. It had taken over ten years to design the craft and it was expected to fly at very near light speed, once it was out in the vacuum of space. In fact, I was told, perhaps jokingly, that BNS stood for Break Neck Speed. My friends thought I was nuts–and perhaps I was. But even if I didn't survive, just being the first to travel at that speed would put me into the aviation history books. Gerry Hilfer, the first man to reach Einstein's light-speed barrier. Besides, I was a bachelor and my parents had died years ago so there would be few who would mourn my passing.
I quickly washed, shaved, dressed and pulled my longish hair back into a knot. When I was younger, I wore my hair short, very short, but I think laziness replaced grooming activity and I now let my hair grow. I was at the docking station at General Avionics by 7 AM and met the flight control guy, Jake Langley and the chief design engineer, Harry Marotti. Although I listened carefully to Jake, I had heard most of what he said before, so it was Harry that I wanted to hear.
"No one has flown even half as fast as you will," Harry said. "There are gravitational considerations that we think we understand, but won't know for certain until you've taken the bird to Near Light Speed. In fact, it's dark matter that is our biggest worry. It's invisible and viscid at NLS so traveling through this medium may be problematic, especially due to gravitational stresses. However, the BNS01 has been fitted with dozens of measuring devices so we'll know just what the problems are, if any…when you get back."
'You mean 'if' I get back," I said, grinning.
Harry looked at Jake and they both granted me a very weak smile.
The craft was sitting in the ejector ramp, ready to go. She was a beautiful bird, like a needle, with very short stubby wings and almost no control surfaces. Once it was well beyond the earth's exosphere, maneuvers are established with small jet exhausts along the side of the craft. What was so fascinating was the fact that, at near light speed, the laws of physics take a decidedly strange turn. Even the best physicists on the planet weren't able to predict the behavior of material objects that reached NLS. Of course, all the relativistic effects have been understood for over two centuries, but that was before dark matter raised its ugly head. That beast pervaded all space and the predictions concerning the behavior of objects plowing through at NLS was varied.
Most physicists predicted a viscous drag that would hinder further acceleration, the frictional force increasing exponentially with velocity. However, a few scientists, mostly Russian, predicted that waves would be generated in the dark matter and the traveling object would be carried along at constant near light speed without the need for fuel. One weirdo, a Japanese physicist named Hamasaki, predicted that light speed wasn't even a limiting factor. In fact, this guy said that gravitational waves would be generated by the compression of dark matter and, at light speed, the compression would result in a hole in space that would open up connecting to a so-called Brane Port. A Russian astrophysicist, Bucharov extended Hamasaki's mathematical description to include properties of a neighboring universe. In fact, Bucharov described passage to a parallel cosmos like traveling along a beach then out onto a peninsula with physical laws different from ours. Bucharov even pointed out that the name 'Hamasaki' is derived from the Japanese words for 'seashore' and 'peninsula'. Hamasaki didn't live long enough to appreciate Bucharov's humor.
I often thought of that image: passing to another universe by strolling along a seashore, the edge of our universe, then onto a peninsula, the path to some parallel universe which had–if Bucharov's suggestions were correct–radically different properties of space and time. Anyway, I could hardly wait. What would I see out the small window? Would space-time become extremely distorted, as predicted? Would that affect the instruments? Would BNS be able to record all the changes? Would I be able to recognize anything? I was sure of only one thing: it was going to be exciting.
Jake and Harry were standing at the edge of the ejector ramp along with several technicians. Jake waved. I waved back. Harry gave me a thumbs up. I gave him an OK sign. Then they all walked away from the ramp and I went through the countdown ritual that I had practiced for months. It was almost noon by the time I was ready to lift off. I could hear Jake in my earpiece. He was reciting the sequence of events that'd take place over the next few minutes. No need for that, but it was a required formality. I looked at the event timer on the dash. Fifty seconds to go. I sat back and waited. There was nothing else to do.
The ramp was miles long and was designed to provide the initial velocity so the plasma fuel could be reserved for the attempt at NLS, once we were well beyond the earth's atmosphere. I'd experience forty Gs for almost thirty seconds. That'd take me to escape velocity, then I'd be floating in space. That's when I'd turn on the heat. The magneto plasma engines would then take over and it was just a matter of holding onto my hat for a while as the BNS01 headed to near light speed.
Although I had trained at forty Gs, it was a shock to feel the acceleration along the ramp. There was nothing for me to do. In fact, there was nothing I could do, so I closed my eyes and waited for the timer to buzz…then I'd be well into the magnetosphere. When I opened my eyes, I could see nothing out the window. That was scary until I remembered the same thing happening when I trained at high G-forces: temporary loss of sight. Soon, stars winked into view on an ebony backdrop and I stared at the instrument panel. Just under twenty-five thousand mph…and coasting. I pushed the rotate button and watched the azimuth change and the sun come into view and below, a blue planet Earth.
Now was the time to engage the plasma engines. With exaggerated slowness I reached for the button labeled 'Engage MPE'. Knowing that I was in constant communication with Jake and Harry and all the folks at General Avionics, I said, "All is well. I'm about to engage the Magneto Plasma Engine. Wish me luck." Then I pushed the button.
Now these engines take time. Acceleration is slow, nothing like the ejector ramp. I could hear music in my earphone. Very funny. I knew it was Jake, filling in the time until I was near light speed. After an inordinate amount of time, maybe a half hour, I saw the display read zero-point-nine, zero-point-nine-one, zero-point-nine-two. Then the display became fuzzy. The normally green numbers turned blue then a faint violet. I looked out the window and saw that the stars we also fuzzy. Looking around the cabin, I could see that the outline of the side
panels was wavy, disfigured.
"Visuals are becoming fuzzy," I said into the mike. "The furniture here is distorted, like those funny distorting mirrors at the carnival. Even the stars, they're like Q-tips." I chuckled. Somehow, that seemed funny.
"We have no video images," Jake said. "Something's wrong with the camera."
"Well, take my word for it. Everything is out of kilter."
Just then there was a violent shaking. I looked at the speed display. It said zero-point-nine-nine. That was surely faster than this gal was designed to go.
"What's the fastest design speed?" I asked. "I see zero-point-nine-nine on the display."
"That's not possible," Harry said. "Maximum is zero-point-nine-five, not more. In fact, I never really expected it'd go that fast. Reset the speed display and wait until it registers speed again."
I pushed the tiny reset button beneath the instrument panel and saw the display go to zero-point-zero, then slowly climb to zero-point-nine-nine.
"No, it's zero-point-nine-nine again," I said. "Wait! Holy shit! It just turned to one-point-zero-zero. Holy shit! Is that possible? Am I traveling at light speed? Wait! There's something out the window. It's not very clear…wait, it's…it's… holy shit…"
Chapter Two
Communication with Gerry had been lost for over an hour. Harry was in discussions with his design engineers.
"At light speed–if he did actually reach light speed–the BNS01 would run up against a brick wall," Harry was saying. "Infinite mass, infinite inertia, no way the bird could fly."
"But what about Bucharov's conjecture?" someone said. He was a redhead with thick glasses and bushy, bright red hair. Everyone called him 'Ruby'. "Bucharov says that beyond light speed lie other realities. He even has the equations which show…"
"That theory has been rejected by every reputable astrophysicist," Harry said. "Besides, Bucharov was the guy who said that our space is attached to other, parallel spaces at black holes. He's been ridiculed at every astrophysics conference. Now he keeps to himself and doesn't publish his works. He's a nut case, just like Hama-somebody, that Japanese eccentric."
"So what would happen if he was right," Ruby said. "What if…"
"Never mind what ifs," Harry said. "We need to contact Gerry so let's discuss that."
There was silence. Every possible means of communication had already been tried. There was nothing left to do but pray–and everyone knew it.
It was three days later that they received the first short burst of hydrogen line radiation from the direction where Gerry had vanished. It was almost periodic, with short, twenty-one centimeter bursts about every second. There seemed to be no information content in the signal. It was recorded and played back at various speeds, just in case there was some embedded data. Nothing.
It was the redhead, Ruby, who first discovered that the time intervals between bursts was modulated. After a series of topological transformations, suggested by the math team, the time intervals were mapped to a sequence of images. The images were so astonishing that all the design engineers were gathered together in the theater to watch the show. Harry introduced the video.
"After some reconfiguration of the time interval sequences, we've managed to extract some images. We'll display them in succession. I'll comment as we go along. Here's the first image. As you can see, it's Gerry looking straight at us, rather fearful it seems–though I've never known him to be frightened. He is actually frowning, but that's probably confusion. The next image is a view out the window of BNS01. It's apparently what Gerry sees and it looks like a pair of eyes, rather large and shadowy eyes. However, I think that's just barrel distortion of the image. The next…"
"Harry!" someone shouted. "Who sent these images? Who had the facilities necessary to transmit the images…especially as a sequence of time intervals between radiation bursts?"
Harry stopped, scratched his chin and shook his head. "Damned if I know," he said.
Ruby stood up. "May I interpret the images from the point of view of Bucharov's theory?" he said. No one responded. All was quiet.
"According to Bucharov, if you travel beyond light speed, then you pass from one universe, this universe, our universe, into a neighboring universe, an alternate reality. Bucharov believes that there are portals, called Brane Ports, which join neighboring universes. Black holes, for example, are such portals. I believe that these images were transmitted through a Brane Port…"
"From the other side?" Harry asked.
Ruby paused, swallowed hard and said, "Yes, that's what I think. In fact, if you look carefully at the subsequent images, I think you may understand what I mean when I say that the images were taken from another macrocosm."
Harry quickly presented the next image. Although blurry, it seemed to show water, some kind of lake or ocean, with dozens of tiny waves, going nowhere. Above the water was a violet sky.
"Isn't that what you'd see if you were standing on a beach?" Ruby asked.
"The colors are all wrong," someone said.
"Yes, of course. Bucharov predicted time distortion. That means frequencies would be different. Blue becomes violet. But wait until you see the next few images."
Harry presented the next image. It was Gerry's face again. Although his skin color was rather jaundiced, he was clearly smiling.
"Okay, look carefully," Ruby said. "Do you notice anything different? You all know Gerry. What's different?"
The room went quiet. Harry was the first to speak. "He does look different, but I don't know exactly why. Is it his eyes? What?"
"He still has that long hair," someone said.
"It's his yellowish skin," someone said.
Harry changed the image to grayscale. "Okay, no color…yet he does look different."
"Gerry did have that small mole on his forehead," someone said.
"Damn!" Harry said. "It's a birthmark and it's on the wrong side. Gerry's birthmark was on the left. This birthmark is on the right."
"It's the mirror image!" Ruby said, almost shouting. "That's the difference!"
"The next slide, please!" someone shouted.
The next image was again of Gerry. He seemed to be sitting on a bench and beside him, a shadow.
"Watch that shadow carefully," Ruby said. "Harry, next image, please."
The next image was almost identical to the last, except that the shadow had now changed position and Gerry was pointing to the shadowy figure. Gerry actually seemed to be laughing.
"There's just one more image," Harry said, "None of us can interpret it."
There was an audible gasp as the next slide appeared. It was definitely Gerry again, but his hair was short, very short…and he was pointing at the shadow, now seemingly floating above Gerry's head.
The next morning, after a night of cogitation, the same group met to discuss the images. All agreed that the images were consistent with some alternate reality, as Ruby had suggested. However, nobody was buying the idea of a parallel universe. In fact, by the time the meeting ended, it was generally agreed that the images were distortions introduced by the transformations that changed time intervals to images. Only Ruby refused to accept that explanation and when he suggested that the math team be called in to verify the accuracy of the transformations, Harry rejected the idea. It seemed that everyone just wanted something uncomplicated. Someone mentioned Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
It was about a month later that the radar blip announced the appearance of BNS01. Of course, no one knew it was the BNS01, but when the plasma jets scrambled to intercept the object, everyone at General Avionics knew that Gerry was back. There were several suggestions concerning the mechanism by which the BNS01 could be landed safely, but there was no need. The needle landed on its own, with the entire assembly of engineers and physicists gathered on the runway to watch. No one was prepared for what followed.
The hatch opened slowly as medical staff approached the craft. A ladder was pushed against the side of
the BNS01 and a medic climbed to the open cockpit. The medic began to convulse and seemed about to fall off the ladder. He slid down the ladder, conversed with his colleagues, then hurried off, apparently confused.
It's been several years since Gerry's return. Gerry is no longer with us. He died shortly after his return. No further development of NLS vehicles has been attempted. All earlier designs were shelved. The picture of the interior of the BNS01 cockpit still hangs in the chief's office, taken by a medic within minutes of the landing.
It showed a child, perhaps six months old, with a birthmark on the right side of his forehead.
Chapter One
Llana set the package on the table, then sat and stared at it.
"Aren't you going to open it?" Kkano was smiling. He knew that his mate was too excited to open it immediately. He watched Llana's antenna oscillate and her cheeks turn deeper purple.
"It's a great honour," she said. "I've been training for many sojourns and when the Master said I was ready, it was almost too much to imagine. There were a hundred trainees. Each expected to be chosen."
Her eye flickered open and closed as Kkano watched with undisguised amusement. "Well, let's get started," he said. "It's not every day that you get a chance to play with the temporal imager. Open it!"
Carefully, Llana removed the metallic foil wrapper. The machine was smaller than she imagined. She had trained on a much larger machine. The dial on the face manipulated the monitor display. Now, it showed a horizontal red bar of decreasing width as you scanned from left to right. To the right of the bar was a region coloured purple, within which was an icon that meant 'danger'.
"Try it," Kkano said. He was clearly enthusiastic to see it in action. "Can you choose the image you wish to insert and can you choose the animal?"
"Well," said Llana with some hesitation, "it's really quite random. During my training, I never was able to reliably choose the subject or predict the image. In fact, the images I insert are often random and not from the animal's past, so I must attach a memory tag to the image which causes the animal to believe it was from its past–even if it wasn't. However, let us try it."
