Quantum Space: Book One in the Quantum Series

by Douglas Phillips

  Daniel paced. “We’ll want to talk to them, including the management. Can you arrange that?”

  “Yes, of course. We have a team meeting this afternoon. You could meet them all together if you wish. Feel free to ask them any questions. Some of them understand the technology better than I.”

  “No, I think I’d rather talk to them individually, first. But can you give me time if I need it?”

  For the first time in their discussion, Park looked nervous. “I can do that.”

  “Are we good to power down, chief?” asked Thomas. Park nodded, and Thomas tapped a few keys. The buzz in the room slowly lowered in volume and pitch. A blue glow appeared in the clear target box, and with a very slight popping sound, the webcam reappeared exactly where it had started.

  “Nice job,” Marie said. “I can see the return trip is a bit less dramatic than the departure.”

  “It takes talent,” Thomas grinned. “They should pay me a bonus when I stick the landing like that.”

  Daniel stared at the webcam, still wondering if the whole thing was an elaborate trick. The view on Thomas’s computer had returned to normal, displaying the room, a close-up of Daniel’s face and Marie in the background. Perhaps the magician would step out any minute and reveal his masterpiece of deception.

  Park stood beside Daniel, whose eyes remained fixated on the newly materialized camera. “Dr. Rice, you seem unsure.”

  “Sorry,” Daniel replied. “Maybe I’ll warm up to this crazy idea. Something still doesn’t feel right.”

  “You are skeptical, I understand,” Park said. “I have an idea.” He reached into a drawer and retrieved a black ring about ten inches in diameter. “One additional piece of evidence.” His eyes sparkled as he held up the ring. “It is an ordinary O-ring, used for connecting pipes and other plumbing fixtures.”

  He gave the ring to Daniel, who turned it over in his hands. It was a simple circle made of rubber. Daniel shrugged.

  Park picked up a triangular metal frame from the shelf, took the rubber ring and suspended it within the empty frame by attaching three metal arms on springs. The frame included a small plastic grip, and Park wound it up like a toy car. The springs on the frame tightened as he wound.

  Park released the grip, gears turned, and a few seconds later, the three arms snapped into different positions, twisting the rubber ring into a double figure eight.

  “A simple toy, yes?” asked Park. “Let’s reset it and try again, only this time in a fourth dimension. Thomas?” As the buzzing sound returned to the room, Park flipped the arms back to their original positions, the rubber ring again perfectly circular within the frame. He wound up the grip and placed the device in the Plexiglas box. The gears began turning, and the arms tightened on the rubber ring. “Once more, please, Thomas.”

  Anticipating, they each held hands over their ears. A bright blue flash, a loud pop, and the frame disappeared. Park allowed several seconds to pass in silence.

  “I think we can bring it back now, Thomas.” The buzzing sound lowered, and the frame flashed back into existence within the clear box. The disappearing act was just as impressive the second time around.

  Park retrieved the frame, detached the now-twisted black ring, and handed it to Daniel. Marie stepped in close to see as Daniel’s eyes grew wide.

  “Holy…”

  No longer a circle, and not even a figure eight, the ring had become an overlapping knot, like a pretzel. Daniel examined the rubber carefully.

  “A trefoil knot, as it’s called,” Park said. “It’s no trick. You’ll find no cuts in the rubber, no splices. The rubber has simply passed over itself through the fourth dimension, creating the knot. One of our physicists, Nala Pasquier, thought of this little game. Ingenious, don’t you think?”

  12 Booster

  The cylinder tumbled, creating glints of light in a sea of empty blackness. It slowly rotated end over end, twisting with each rotation, like an Olympic platform diver on his way to the water. On one side was a United States flag.

  It was a spent booster rocket that at one time had propelled a research vehicle on its way to Mars. Its job complete, the booster had fallen into a long elliptical orbit around Earth, where it would remain, potentially for thousands of years. Over the eons, its orbit would decay through the slightest bit of friction with random molecules until its closest approach finally touched the highest reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. Then, it would plunge to a fiery death.

  But this particular booster would stay in orbit far longer than most others of its type, because its path had changed. Its orbit now passed through truly empty space. With the pull of Earth’s gravity still fully in effect but friction near zero, its velocity would be maintained almost indefinitely. Contact with any molecules at all occurred only for the briefest moments as it passed through a thin plane where all mass existed. The plane of Kata Zero, containing the Earth, the sun and all the stars of the universe.

  But even in this place seemingly devoid of a single quark or lepton, the booster was not completely alone. Nearby was another object, as black as space. A wedge, nearly invisible except for a single red light.

  The wedge slowly pivoted as it surveyed the nearly empty space. Then, in an intense flash of blue light, it disappeared.

  13 Magic

  The likelihood of Fermilab staff eating lunch at a hotel restaurant seemed remote. Even so, Daniel requested a table in the back, far from anyone else. There was much to talk about before their plan for the afternoon kicked off.

  Marie sat across from him, full of energy, her words spilling out in a stream of consciousness. “I feel like I’ve been watching a film crew making a movie. Like J.J. Abrams just said ‘cut,’ and the cast walked off the set. Was that even real? So, so weird.”

  “The tesseract.” Daniel repeatedly shook his head. “You could tell it was beyond 3-D. As he rotated it, the changes in perspective… I’m not even sure what I was looking at, but it was mind-altering.”

  Marie nodded in agreement. “Even now I don’t feel comfortable. The camera was so personally invasive. Truly fascinating to see your own brain, but at the same time, uncomfortable. Like sharing your medical records.”

  “Yeah, I wonder where they might take this technology. At the very least, it makes MRIs and x-rays obsolete. I suppose you could even position a remote-controlled scalpel in 4-D space and operate on a patient without ever cutting their skin. Tumor? No problem, just remove it from the inside-out. Routine stuff.”

  “Daniel, I’ve seen a lot of fascinating things in my career at NASA, but what we saw this morning was anything but routine.”

  Daniel’s next question was for Marie, but also for himself. “Before we head over to Stetler, what do you think about the Diastasi connection to Soyuz?”

  “There’s a correlation, for sure.”

  “I agree, there’s something there. Park says they have no ability to reach outside that room. But either he’s not telling us something, or he doesn’t know.”

  “It’s the lack of radar tracking that’s most convincing for me.” Marie spoke confidently, the emotion she’d displayed earlier in the day now missing, or at least in check. “Think about it… those guys have literally told us they are alive, but no ground station can find them. Of course, if Soyuz were hiding in this bizarre quantum space…”

  Daniel’s thoughts were the same, but given the leap into the world of fantasy, it was good to hear it from Marie. “Ground radar would never see them.” He held up a salt shaker, imagining it hovering in 4-D space above the table. “Park proved that radio signals can still get through—that’s how the Wi-Fi camera worked.”

  “And why ground is receiving from Soyuz, but not vice versa. Our controllers have been trying to reach them for hours, but Soyuz doesn’t acknowledge.”

  Daniel turned the salt shaker, and a few grains of salt spilled on the table. “Right. Just like the webcam, the antenna on Soyuz is pointed back towards 3-D space. But ground antennas have no ability to
point to another dimension. Just like a Flatland person who can’t lift his hand off the flat page, we can’t point kata, either with hands or antennas.”

  Marie paused in thought. “Yeah, high-gain antennas are directional, like a searchlight beam. That might also explain why the transmissions from Soyuz are so broken.” She touched his hand and rotated the salt shaker. “What if they’re adrift in this other dimension and rotating? As they turn, they sometimes face toward 3-D space and the Earth, but at other times they’re facing… well, who knows what?”

  “Makes sense. Now we need to find out how this happened.”

  “And how we get them out of it,” she said softly.

  The task ahead was enormous and without any answers, yet. More importantly, this investigation was no longer a sideline activity commissioned primarily to satisfy Christine Shea’s need for thoroughness. It was the critical path. “Time check. How long has it been now?”

  Before Daniel could do the mental calculation, Marie answered his question. “Twelve hours since separation and reentry.”

  She became quiet and stared off into space. “I’ve sat in a Soyuz trainer. You’re wedged in between the seat, the control panel and the parachute packs. There’s not even enough room to stretch your arms. When they close the hatch, you almost immediately feel claustrophobic. After ten minutes, you have to force yourself not to panic. I can’t imagine what it must be like for hours. Or days.”

  Daniel had a good imagination. Claustrophobia could be crippling. But there was also asphyxiation, hypercapnia, dehydration, hypothermia and explosive decompression. There were many ways to die in space, and he felt no need to speculate further on how this might end.

  “The clock is ticking,” he said. “Those guys are doing their job, let’s do ours.” He opened his laptop and pulled up the background documents Bradley had provided.

  “Stetler is up next. It says here their contract goes back even before 2012, so they’ve been a player for a while. The company is run by Terry Stetler. And we already have an appointment with his CTO, Shawn Yost.” He looked up at Marie. “Neither name rings a bell, and I know a lot of technology people. Not much online either.”

  He returned to skimming the documents. “There are sixteen engineers and scientists on Diastasi. Ten are government employees and six are Stetler contractors. Let’s focus on those six. I want to find out what they know.”

  Marie nodded. “How do you want to do this? Work together? Split up? I’m just being conscious of our need to move quickly.”

  Daniel thought for a moment. “Let me ask you this. Do you see any evidence that Park is lying to us?”

  “No, not really,” she answered. “Nothing obvious, at least. He didn’t avoid any of our questions, and there weren’t any locked rooms that we didn’t see. I thought he was open—proud, even. But I was a little surprised that he was so adamant that they had nothing to do with Soyuz. The link is pretty clear to you and me.”

  “That’s exactly it,” said Daniel. “Towards the end, he agreed there might be a link. It suggests he may not know what’s going on.”

  “Possible,” she agreed. “But he’s right there at Fermilab. He sees what everyone is doing, doesn’t he? How does someone alter the equipment or boost the energy level without him knowing about it?”

  Daniel shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not Fermilab at all. Maybe it’s coming from somewhere else. But that’s a pretty short list. If you need neutrinos, it’s either Fermilab or CERN. I suppose we could get someone out to the LHC in Geneva.” He heaved a sigh. “What we really need is more information. We meet with Yost in thirty minutes. Let’s see where we stand after that and sync with Washington on next steps.”

  Their food arrived and they ate in silence. Daniel thought about how a police detective would view the case. Motive would certainly come into play. Even if someone had the capability, who would send a Soyuz spacecraft and three astronauts into oblivion? Terrorists? A scientist with a grudge or under extortion? There were possibilities, but no definitive answer.

  The waitress cleared her plate, and Marie pulled out her phone to check messages. “Well, this is interesting.”

  “What have you got?”

  “It’s from Augustin Ibarra. He says they received a report from an Army orbital debris tracking station at Kwajalein Atoll. The report says that several big pieces of space debris are missing.”

  “Missing? Like, lost?” Daniel asked.

  “That’s what it says. They track a long list of space junk. Some things are big, decommissioned satellites and stuff like that. Others are small, like a bolt that drifted away during an ISS repair EVA. Because of the high velocities involved, all of them are hazardous to human spaceflight.” She set her phone down and looked up. “You saw the movie Gravity, didn’t you?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Well, the guys who track this stuff know every detail. Orbital vectors, when each object will hit the atmosphere, everything. And they’re saying that fourteen objects are missing. They didn’t burn up, they’re just gone.”

  “That’s scary.”

  She waved a hand. “No, not scary. It could be confirmation, Daniel. Soyuz may not be by itself after all.”

  He paused, silently thinking. “Do we know when this junk went missing?”

  “They don’t know for sure. They update their tracking data once a week, and the update was just this morning. So, it could have been anytime in the past week.”

  Daniel laid out a timeline in his mind. Cause and effect. A logical progression of events. “So, this junk potentially went missing before Soyuz, right?”

  “That’s possible,” she answered.

  Daniel leaned his chin on a hand. “Huh. We seem to have a magician on our hands. Somebody that can make things disappear.”

  14 Corporations

  The Fermilab corporate office building was stunning in its modern architecture. Made almost entirely of glass, the building was long and narrow, lifted above the ground on stilts, with knife-edged points on either end. Oddly dangerous in appearance, one end seemed to be skewering a rectangular blue building through its midsection.

  Daniel opened the door for Marie, beneath a sign that read, Office Technical and Education Building. For such an amazing design, the building bore a remarkably mangled name. Particle physicists, Daniel laughed to himself. How could such smart people be so terrible at naming things? He expected the conference rooms to be named Up, Down, Charm and maybe even Strange.

  They climbed a grand staircase along the glass wall, a view of the Tevatron ring disappearing in the distance. Passing through a second glass door, they entered the corporate side of Fermilab. The reception area was immaculate, every molecule neatly in its proper place. Frosted glass, a visitor’s log and a jar of jelly beans capped the reception desk. Backlit brushed aluminum letters formed the words Stetler Corporation. As they entered, a woman with luxurious hair straight from a shampoo commercial looked up and provided a wide, corporate smile.

  “Welcome to Stetler, how may I help you?” she asked in a pitch-perfect voice.

  “Daniel Rice and Marie Kendrick. We have an appointment with Shawn Yost.”

  “Mr. Rice, Ms. Kendrick, would you mind signing in? Is there anything I can get you? Soft drink? Coffee? Water?”

  “No, thanks, we just came from lunch,” Daniel responded as he registered in the log.

  They took seats, Marie expertly using only the front edge of a backless chair and Daniel worried he might inadvertently lean back and fall over. On one wall hung an abstract painting with circles and lines and things that looked like flashes of light. Particles smashing into each other? he wondered.

  Five minutes later, Daniel was just about to ask again when a woman in a matching blue skirt and blazer walked in, her blond hair perfectly styled and her hand already extended.

  “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Rice,” she said and took his hand in a gentle but businesslike handshake. “Joni Thorson, Direc
tor of Government Relations. So glad to meet you!”

  She turned to Marie. “Ms. Kendrick? Joni Thorson. So glad you could pay us a visit.” Daniel recognized the type. Warm and bubbly, gracious and mannered, and one hundred percent fake.

  “Did you just fly in?” she asked.

  “Earlier today,” he explained. “We spent the morning with Dr. Park over at the lab.”

  “Isn’t he the loveliest man?” Joni continued gently touching Daniel on the arm. “I’ve heard one of his lectures on the work they do. I was so impressed! He is just remarkable. Well, let me take you to the conference room—it’s right down the hall. Can I get you anything? Soft drink? Coffee? Water?”

  “No, thanks,” Marie said, glancing at Daniel out of the corner of her eye. “We just came from lunch.”

  They walked through another glass door and down a hallway decorated with modern artwork. They passed several offices, each shared by several studious-looking people transfixed by their computer screens. Near the end, they turned into a large conference room with windows looking out over the Fermilab complex.

  “Please make yourselves comfortable. Shawn will be joining us in just a minute.” They each found a seat along the massive mahogany table, the bulk of the chairs remaining empty. “Did you get a tour of Fermilab, or perhaps you’ve been before? Isn’t it an amazing place?”

  Daniel took the lead. “We did. But our purpose today is very specific, Ms. Thorson. And time-critical. We are here from the Office of the National Science Advisor to discuss an urgent national security issue.”

  “Oh, yes, I know,” she said with emphasis, as if she had overheard a juicy piece of office gossip. “It’s that terrible tragedy with the astronauts. It’s all over the news. Those poor men, I feel so bad for them and their families. They said they probably crashed into the ocean. And please, call me Joni. We’re very informal here.”