Starship X-15

by Alan VanMeter

  “Wait, so what about all the bible stuff the Angels supposedly said? You can’t mean that there really is a jealous, vengeful God.” I simply can’t accept that.

  “No, no. The stuff they supposedly said in the bible was made up by the fellows writing those books, for their own purposes. Just like it always is.”

  “Bastards! They sure got a lot of people hurt.”

  Now Ed asks Angela, “So Ms. History App, does it say if any of the world’s religions are correct, or even close to the truth?”

  Angela cocks her head. “I didn’t read that far, but let’s find out. It is a good question.” She quickly taps on her tablet’s screen until she grows a wry grin. “Okay, here is a list of some of the spiritual belief systems based in truth. Wow, this will sure rock some peoples’ boats. It is a long list though. Let me try to see if it will list belief systems not based in truth.” She manipulates the machine until she gets wide eyes. “Yeah, this is classified for a reason all right.” She hands the tablet for the rest of us to see.

  The list of false religions is short, and the most notable ones are Greek and Roman based Judeo Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. That actually brings a smile to my face. I know bullshit when I hear it after all.

  “Hey, why does it make a distinction of Greek and Roman based Judeo Christianity, is there another kind?” Ed asks.

  Angela nods, and takes the tablet back to change the display. She slides it back to him in a moment. “Gnostic Christianity is on the truth list.”

  He frowns. “I wonder what the difference is.”

  Angela shrugs, and neither Alicia, nor I have an answer.

  I speculate aloud, “So the Angel thing was just them visiting us in the past.”

  “Yup.” Angela giggles. “The ancient alien theorists were right.”

  Suddenly Angela’s face shows shock. She stands up at attention saying, “Attention on deck!”

  The rest of us hurriedly stand at attention too, and Admiral Romero walks over with a tray of food. “As you were cadets.” She orders. “May I join you?”

  “Certainly Admiral.” Alicia beams, as we all sit down.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “We were just sharing some of the amazing things we’re learning Admiral Romero.” I smile at her.

  “There is certainly plenty to learn, as I find out every day.” She smiles back at me. “What are you finding out currently?”

  Ed tells her, “We were just learning which old Earth religions were false, and which were based in truth. That stuff is sure to raise some hackles.”

  Stephanie laughs. “It will when that information is released. We are going to have to be very gentle with it though. Until then that stuff stays here on NET Nine.”

  “Affirmative.” Ed responds.

  The rest of us nod.

  “Admiral Romero, if the Donox Legacy has visited us in our past, have they been manipulating humanity, you know… genetically?”

  She looks at me as she chews a bite, and raises her brows. Then she swallows with a nod. “Yes they have. The reason for this is still on a need to know basis though. Eventually you will all learn why.”

  Alicia captures the Admiral’s gaze, and asks, “What is star travel like?”

  “Well, to be honest with you, it is not comfortable at all.” Stephanie tells.

  “Is it painful?” Alicia looks worried.

  Stephanie takes her hand gently. “Yes, it is, but it is bearable, and you most likely won’t suffer any permanent injury.”

  I know she can see the fear on all of our faces, as I can.

  “This isn’t for the meek, you have to be bold, and fearless.” Stephanie lets us know.

  She pats Alicia’s hand then goes back to eating her dinner. Suddenly I am not quite so eager to try this warp travel, or whatever it is. ‘You most likely won’t suffer any permanent injury.’ Stephanie was being honest with us, this sure isn’t for the meek. Am I meek? No!

  Before we all finish and leave each other for the night, it is agreed to share meals again. Even Admiral Romero says she will make sure to find us again. I do have some friends in high places; they will help me prepare for whatever pain I must suffer. I am so doing this! Stephanie did it…hell she was the very first! I want to be like her… yeah!

  Chapter 4

  There is a knock on my door, it’s almost oh six hundred. Probably Wilkins. Yup.

  “Good morning Devon.”

  “Good morning agent Wilkins.”

  “I just wanted to say farewell before I left. I will be back at some point, but there is business to attend to back home.”

  “Oh, well heck. I want to say thank you agent, for giving me this opportunity, and second chance.”

  “Just make us proud Devon.” He smiles.

  I go and hug him, and give him a kiss on the cheek. “I mean it… thanks.”

  He chuckles and waves goodbye.

  I have class to get to, and I hurry off after he’s gone. Today is another day of indoctrination, as will be tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll get our book downloads today, so I can start reading ahead of the class. Math is going to be tricky as it always has been; not my strong suit. That is another reason why I dropped out of school; when I got so lost in the math there was no way I could ever make sense of it. Maybe if I get a head start it won’t be so bad.

  I am surprised that I only have two classes per day, that’s only four hours of class time. What am I going to do with the rest of the days? Oh yeah…homework. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday the two classes are Pre-Calculus and Basic Quantum Drive Theory. On Tuesdays, and Thursdays I have Stellar Cartography 101, and Advanced Physical Conditioning. That last one sounds intimidating. They offer some electives as well, maybe I will have time on the weekends. What looks good…Tai Chi Chuan? Maybe… EVA specialties? That would be like the big pool back at NASA, but in real space. That sounds good. What else… Universal common language? What the hell? ‘Learn to speak the common tongue of the star-faring races of our galaxy.’ Oh shit yeah! Damn they have so many cool ones… and not enough time. I had better not get carried away, I want my core grades to shine. This is Star Command Academy after all. Captain Stanley, Captain Devon Stanley… I like the sound of that.

  My first day of classes is much more difficult than I had imagined. The Pre-Calculus especially! Fortunately my lunch and dinner friends are good math tutors, Alicia is the best though, and she seems to like spending time with me. I feel the same way. The second class isn’t so bad to start with, mostly just going over the basic principles, and constituents of the Universe. Some of the same things Professor W. told us back on Earth. That one doesn’t bother me as much as the first. Thank goodness for Alicia.

  The first Tuesday is a whole different tune. My first class in the morning is very familiar territory to me. My hobby and obsession with the heavens is paying off. I think I will ace this course. An hour after lunch I have PE, basically. At least that is how I am looking at it as I change into my workout clothes, all Star Command issue, and head to the large gym, or rather complex of gyms. Our instructor leads us through a series of warm-up stretches, and then she tells us to follow her. She goes running off, and so we all start running after her. At the far end of one of the many gyms, we turn up a wide tunnel that gently curves upwards ahead and behind. I realize this is like one of the main corridors that wraps around the entire wheel of the station’s hull, but this one is strictly for running.

  As we finally make it back around to the gym entrance she yells back to us, “That’s almost six point three K. One more time around kids!” She keeps running by the entrance. I moan on the inside, maybe the outside too, I’m not sure. Whew, here we go again. It’s a good thing that I’m not in horrible shape, otherwise this would kill me. The second time around she finally runs us into the gym again, and leads us through a thorough set of warm-down stretches.

  “Welcome to Advanced Conditioning. We do more than run here, let me assure you. This is Star
Command people! You will be in top shape, and you will thank us for it. Any time you wish, feel free to use any of the gyms, or the running track, there is even a small pool facility for swimming. Weight rooms, racket ball courts, hoops, volley ball, boxing, you name it we got it, or can get it. Put these resources to work for you! That’s all for today, thank you.” She voices loudly.

  The class is coed, and so are the lockers and showers. It is different, but I’m too tired to care. No one is interested anyhow, just in getting the sweat off of them, and I would assume like me, in going and getting some rest. That was a good workout, at least now I know what to expect. My bed calls me right into it, and I wake up long after I was planning on sharing a meal with my new friends. They’ll understand I hope, they will right after their first Advanced Conditioning class anyhow.

  Each semester is only eight weeks long. I find out that I will have to complete three full semesters before I will graduate as an Ensign in Star Command. That’s only six months, no sweat. After I begin active duty, I can still take more courses and get a higher degree, and rank too. Oh crap. To think that just a very short time ago I was a conniving little slut, damn; all I had grown to care about was myself, or at least that is where I was headed. I like the way things are here. Everyone tries to help each other out, and we all get that our teamwork may just save our lives someday.

  The next time I see my friends at dinner, Alicia isn’t there. Angela explains that she is on duty at the moment.

  “Duty?”

  “Don’t you have a duty roster Devon?” Ed asks.

  “No.”

  “Hey what gives?” Angela frowns.

  “Lucky girl. Don’t say anything about it, trust me.” He chuckles.

  “What do you guys have to do?” Now I’m curious.

  “Stand watches…usually in the middle of the night.” She tells still wearing the frown.

  “Oh… yeah, I will be quiet.”

  “Say, did you hear the rumor, or scuttlebutt as it were?” Ed asks me.

  “No.”

  “I heard from one of the professors that we just landed the first human colony on another world.”

  “Holy shit!” I gasp.

  Angela laughs. “It’s real Devon, I heard it too.”

  “We are really in the number of the first pioneers… of the stars.” I am beyond excited. This is big. “Where?”

  “Epsilon Eridanus.” He has a gleam in his eyes.

  “How far is that?” Angela asks.

  “Almost eleven light years.” Ed raises his brows.

  “We are just coming to the part of how the Quantum drive works in class.” Angela says. “Then we can find out how long it takes to get there.”

  “I can’t wait.” I nod.

  “Me either.”

  When they do finally explain how the heck we are getting to the stars, they bring in a special guest speaker, and it is Professor W.

  “I am the inventor of the Quantum Shifting Drive, my name is Professor W. Someday you’ll learn my real name, after I’m gone.” He smiles, looking around. He sees me and we lock eyes, then his smile brightens considerably. “Now you have all been brought up to speed as to the fluid nature of time-space, and it’s interaction with matter and light. Put in base principle; matter tends to come together, in the process of this it compresses time-space between it, causing displacement and movement of time-space towards this compression. When enough matter comes together you have a gravity-well. Light does the opposite of matter though. It tends to fly apart in all directions. Light also expands the volume of time-space as it blazes through this fluid, causing expansion like a wake around the head of the photon. When the photon strikes matter, it doesn’t impart any energy itself on the matter, but the wake of expanded time-space does impart kinetic energy on the matter. Hence the particle like effect of light. Also the faster time-space moves over and through a system, the less kinetic pressure is imparted on the system. Time will also be experienced at a faster rate relative to a system with time-space fluid moving more slowly over it. If time-space moves at a fast enough rate over a system, then that object, or system will be experiencing another temporal dimension. A realm where light will not transmit between that fourth temporal dimension and our third temporal realm. This is what happens when electrons quantum shift orbits around atomic nuclei. The base matter particles, or singlets if you like, which make up sub-atomic particles, either expand fast enough out from the center of the electron, which is a vortex of slower time-space in the second temporal realm, or they collapse inwards fast enough that the time-space around them moves relatively fast. Enough so to pop them out of our dimension, and when they shift nuclear orbits; they actually do move through the distance between the orbits, but in the fourth dimension. We never see it, as it happens way too fast.” He pauses.

  “Okay, we are up to speed, now let’s get to the good stuff. How to quantum shift a large object. The base principle is pretty simple; all you need to do is to get time-space moving over an object fast enough to pop it into the fourth temporal realm. Easy enough right? Well not exactly. You see, all the time-space moving over the object is also moving through the object. If you have it move fast enough to make a quantum shift, the matter will be disintegrated into sub-atomic particles. Yeah that’s a real bummer, game over.” He gets several chuckles from that. “I figured that it would require some sort of special matter to prevent this, but even very dense matter still has the same problem; the molecules are not arranged to inhibit the flow of time-space. One day I applied my hypothesis to some very strange material I had witnessed on a television program. These scientists showed off these gleaming white blocks of material that floated above the floor just a bit. They said they had no lighter than air gasses in the block, and that the reason they floated had to be due to its peculiar molecular structure. One of the scientists then lightly flicked one of the blocks with a finger, and it slid all the way across the lab. They said it had no air resistance. Next one of the men took a shot gun, and shot one of the blocks with a slug. It just left a lead smear across the surface, which wasn’t even scratched. They said it was an infinite chain polymer. That sure stuck with me, that program did.”

  “So I applied my hypothesis to the blocks, and figured out what was going on. If you take an infinite chain polymer and arrange the molecules so that they overlap all the void spaces between them, so that if you look on the molecular scale at some thickness of the material, you would not be able to see through it. Then you would have what I call obstructed matter, and its function is as a time-space inhibitor. It works like this; time-space is moving downward on the surface of a world, as it hits the top of the block, not all of the time-space fluid can fit through the inhibitor material, so some has to go around the block, and this time-space will have to move faster as per fluid dynamics. So the faster a fluid moves, the less pressure it exerts. In this case the kinetic pressure of gravity. Less gravitational pressure means that the material is gravity buoyant. Also the faster moving time-space going over the exterior will move any air molecules quickly out of the way, as well as lead impacting it. So there’s the material we need for the quantum shifting dilemma.” He beams a bright smile.

  “Here is the prize for all of us.” He touches a remote control, and a video image fills the white projector board behind him. There is a cut-away view of what seems to be a flying saucer. “The saucer shape may seem ironic, but in truth we did have some help from the Donox Legacy. They had purposefully crashed several interstellar craft for us to reverse engineer. Now I didn’t work at Area 51, I envisioned this myself actually, though strangely enough my father did work at Area 51. It’s just a coincidence. So just what makes this shape so special? Notice in the cut-away the combustion chamber like area on the seeming bottom of the craft. This is actually the front or bow of the ship, and is the direction of travel. Flat side first. So it works like this; a fuel pellet of element 115 is fed into the combustion chamber and activated. As the fuel is consumed it pr
oduces expanding time-space by the controlled disintegration of matter. The combustion chamber is made from thick inhibitor material, and funnels most of the expanding time-space out the front of the craft, or out the flat side. This cause time-space behind the craft to rush forward to fill the low pressure area created in front. The hull is made from inhibitor material, and as you can see is thicker on the dome of the aft of the ship. Not all the time-space can move through the dome and so much of it must rush around the saucer. The shape of the hull makes the time-space have to move very fast on the exterior. Fast enough to push the craft into the fourth temporal dimension. It also physically pushes the ship forward at the same time. Now what good is traveling in the fourth dimension? Well the ship still has to move from point A to point B, and it’s going to take a real number of years to do that, but years in the fourth dimension though, which are mere moments to us in the third dimension. Well for starters it would appear as mere moments from both the launching and landing star system’s point of view. That is handy. Yet that means the crew is going to age many years on each voyage, and probably go crazy. Not so handy. However, it just so happens that with this design, the rate of time-space movement on the inside of the craft is very much slower than that on the outside of it. In essence, this is a quantum shifting star craft with a slow time berth. The crew experiences the voyage in the third temporal dimension, meaning that there is an event horizon separating the inside of the ship from the outside.” As he pauses for a sip of water, it all makes sense to me. I can almost see it happening. Now I can’t wait to go, painful or not.

  “The last part of my lecture is just so that you understand why quantum star travel is so painful.” I wonder if he’s reading my mind.

  “We need to realize that with this design; when you get to where you are going, and then if you were to just open a hatch to get out. The gravitonic pressure inside is far greater than on the outside, in other words the time-space is moving much more slowly on the inside than outside. A quick drastic change in gravitonic kinetic pressure will cause every molecule of all matter inside to get real excited, and very hot. Everything inside the ship would be immolated. To prevent this we have designed and built relief panels that open at the correct places around the ship to slowly equalize the gravitonic pressure to that of the exterior. However the process is still very painful. The details will be explained to each of you later. Just suffice it to say that it is memorable. Remember, you must boldly go. Thank you.” Cheers of AYE erupt from the Cadets as he walks out of the room.