Quantum Void

by Douglas Phillips

  “I see,” Nicole said. “So, at this point, it is not your new best friend?” The audience laughed, perhaps at the genderless pronoun or perhaps just the way she said it. Core made it clear that it had no gender, compelling humans to drop their initial use of he and him. The topic seemed a never-ending source of amusement for some.

  Daniel laughed too but then resumed a more serious tone. “Here’s what I would say about Core and whatever policy-making body it represents. They are brilliant, highly advanced, benevolent, as far as we can tell, but… wary.”

  “What, they don’t trust us? Can’t imagine why.” More laughter.

  “Well, I get a sense that they have undisclosed procedures for how they would react to anything we might do. For example, let’s imagine that we got a bit too aggressive with our newly discovered capability to compress space and we started sending spy satellites to monitor their communications or take close-up pictures of their planets.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me. You’re saying they can snoop on us but we can’t snoop on them? I want to know who these people are.”

  “Yeah, I do too. But we need to be careful, listen and learn, without being brash. We shouldn’t expect that our Earth-centric concepts of alliances and enemies will hold up in this new arena. There are some entirely new rules of civilization that we’re just beginning to learn.”

  Nicole’s eyebrows lowered, her face contorting into a look of scorn. “Don’t you watch the SyFy Channel? We already know how this goes. When do they invade Earth to steal our water and mutilate our cows?”

  The audience roared, and Marie laughed along. Nicole knew exactly what she was doing. Regardless of the information governments released, social media posts from around the world made it abundantly clear that fear was widespread, even when expressed in slightly comedic form. The attack would begin with mountainous warships floating in the sky. An interdimensional doorway would open in every city, through which giant insects or lizards with slime dripping from sharp fangs would appear. There were as many variations as there were imaginations in the world. Many thought the aliens were already here, hiding beneath a layer of human skin in a devious disguise.

  When the noise from the audience died down, Daniel spoke. “Alien invasion? We’re conditioned to think this way. After all, our history is mostly a story of one group of people invading another group’s country. We’re used to it. So naturally, we think that’s what will happen this time. But try to step outside our limited experience and thoughtfully examine the situation. What do we see? A collection of alien civilizations, scattered across thousands of light-years, that shows every indication of being at peace with each other. Why would they invade Earth? What do we have that they want? Water? Sorry—it’s one of the most common molecules in the galaxy, we find it practically everywhere. How about cows, or even people, as a food source? Every one of these civilizations has a biology fundamentally different from ours. To them, I doubt we’d taste very good.”

  “What if they just want our planet? ‘So long, humans,’” Nicole mimicked in a bloodthirsty alien voice, “and they just zap us out of existence.”

  Daniel was beginning to get that look of the self-assured scientist that Marie remembered so well from their time together. “We’ve already discovered several thousand planets within a few hundred light-years of Earth. There are probably millions more out there, and many of them may be like Mars, devoid of life but potentially habitable. With a galaxy as big and diverse as the Milky Way, finding good real estate is not a problem. Again, they have no reason to take Earth from us.”

  “So, your bottom line is they really don’t care about us?”

  “That’s my feeling. They’re inviting us to join their group—granted, in some limited way. But if we decline, we can just go our own way. I’m not sure it even matters to them which choice we make.”

  A head poked into the break room, and Marie paused the video. It was Stephanie Perrin. “I thought I might find you in here,” she said. “They’re looking for you. Ibarra wants you ASAP.”

  Marie put her phone away and slipped into her shoes. “That doesn’t sound good. Was it Carol?” Ibarra was the administrator for human spaceflight operations at NASA, and Carol was his assistant.

  “A woman,” Stephanie said. “I didn’t recognize her, but she looked a little… um, how do you Americans say? Bent out of shape.”

  Probably Carol. Marie thanked Stephanie and hurried down the long corridor.

  Ibarra’s corner office was at the far end, and Carol’s desk was positioned just outside. “Glad to see they found you,” Carol said as she approached. She nodded to the office. “Go on in, he wants you.”

  “What did I do?” Marie asked.

  “You’ll have to talk to him.”

  “Oh, come on, Carol. At least give me a hint. Am I in the firing line or just an innocent bystander?”

  “No can do.” Carol shook her head. “You’re on your own. Get in there.”

  Marie took a deep breath, straightened her glasses and brushed her hair back. “Okay, but send in the paramedics if you hear any screams.”

  Carol grinned. She knew something.

  Marie knocked and opened the door to Ibarra’s office. A slender Hispanic man with a full head of gray hair looked up. “Oh, good. Marie, please come in. Have a seat.”

  She scooted a chair from the side of the room to the center and sat. Her heart beat just a little faster now that she was in the crosshairs of the man who had ruthlessly transformed NASA from a government agency to a government-corporation consortium. There had been casualties along the way, with several top-level players leaving altogether.

  “Something going on?” In Marie’s experience, direct but polite had always worked with Ibarra. “Anything I can help with?”

  Ibarra smiled. “Help? You’re center stage, depending on your eating habits.”

  Marie rolled her eyes. “Okay, what’s going on? Carol was just as obscure.”

  His lips tightened and the lines in his face seemed to deepen. “It’s been a rough couple of days, tougher still that the launch is tomorrow. That’s why you’re here, Marie. Let’s have a little talk.”

  Marie physically gulped.

  “But first, a question. Do you eat peanuts?”

  “Augustin, really… what’s this about?”

  “Do you eat peanuts?” he repeated.

  “Yes, occasionally.”

  “So, no allergy?”

  “No. What are you—”

  “That’s it, then,” Ibarra interrupted. “Jessica is out. You’re in.”

  His words hit her like a hammer. A flush rose quickly into her face, followed by a tingle in her neck. “I’m… in? You mean, on the team?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. You’re on the Ixtlub team.”

  She wasn’t sure she was hearing him correctly or that her brain was even functioning. “But Jessica—”

  “She’s been told. There’s nothing she could have done differently. Unfortunately, she’s allergic… to peanuts. She disclosed it on her application, but when we selected her, we didn’t know much about the planetary environment. Now we do.”

  “They have peanuts on Ixtlub?” This was starting to sound like an elaborate joke. If it was, she couldn’t bear to hear the punchline that might be coming.

  “No, of course not,” Ibarra said seriously. “There’s not a single plant we share in common. But a peanut allergy is not related to the nut itself. People are allergic to a rare protein that, on Earth, appears only in peanuts and a few other roots. On Ixtlub, things are different. The same protein is rather common, in the soil, even in the atmosphere. There’s no way we could have shielded her from it. If I send Jessica there, she’ll die.”

  He was still talking nonsense. “I’m not even an alternate. I’m the administrative coordinator. I don’t understand.”

  Ibarra walked around to the front of his desk and leaned against it. “This is where it gets a little strange,” he said quietl
y, almost like he was talking with no one but himself. “He specifically asked for you.”

  “Who?”

  “Aastazin.”

  It was flattering and confusing at the same time. “Zin wants me on the team? That’s very kind, but doesn’t he understand we have procedures? There are designated backups.”

  “He says you increase the probability of success.” Ibarra looked very serious, and tired too. Maybe he’d already been down this path of explaining to Zin how NASA worked. “He says if you don’t go, he’ll need to cancel the mission, or at least postpone to a later date.”

  Marie pondered the sudden change of events. Zin was caring, thoughtful and extremely polite. It seemed he also kept some secrets.

  “Augustin, you know I want to be on the team. It’s a dream come true. But I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve Zin as my benefactor.” As much as she wanted to jump for joy at the news, the circumstances were odd. “How do you feel about this?”

  His voice was gentle but firm. “I think you’ll make a great team member. I always did, but I could fill only two positions. I figured you’d be on a future mission.”

  “But Zin forced your hand.”

  Ibarra nodded. “He did. And he won’t explain why, either, which rubs me the wrong way. It’s all about probabilities, he said. Like he’s computing something in his head.”

  “Is it Core?” Marie just blurted it out. She wasn’t sure she should be repeating rumors.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard the same stories. Core and Zin are connected somehow. We had a long conversation. He doesn’t deny it, but he says it’s irrelevant to his recommendation that you be on the team.”

  Marie lowered her head in thought. “Wow. This is so sudden.”

  Could she really do this? They were only a day away from launch and she hadn’t read nearly as much of the mission documentation as the other team members. Twenty-four hours. Not much time before four people would take their position on the transfer stations and slide through the portal. Could she be one of them?

  A smile crept across her lips. She envisioned herself standing on the surface of another planet, a dim red sun in the sky and exotic plants around her. Would it be like that? She didn’t know, but there was still time—she’d cram. She’d be ready for the most incredible opportunity of her life.

  Ibarra seemed to be reading her mind. His normally hard look softened, almost fatherly. “Marie, we’re behind the curve.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” she lied. “I’m totally ready to go.”

  He seemed unconvinced. She had always been a terrible liar. “Make sure you are. You’ll need to be sharp when you get there. Hell, even before. We’re bypassing the alternates. Adding you to the team is bound to cause some hard feelings.”

  “Jessica or Tim?” Tim was the only team member she’d had some experience with, and not in a good way.

  “Jessica won’t be an issue, she gets it,” Ibarra answered. “Marie, it’s your job to merge into a team that wasn’t expecting you. It might not be easy, but everyone on this team is a professional, and they damned well better act like it. Tim or anyone else. The stakes for this mission are high, so if there’s a problem, you tell me.”

  Marie nodded, even though she knew right away she’d never do as he suggested. She’d prepare and be ready for whatever came.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Marie walked briskly, her head down, reading prelaunch mission notes on her tablet. It had been four hours of much of the same: reading, skimming where possible, rereading for items that probably should have been memorized at this point in the training program. Safety procedures, life support systems, transfer procedures, customs and protocols. It went on and on. The documents were dense in places, too technical in others. She’d never manage to get through it all in time. Launch—or more precisely, the portal connection—was tomorrow afternoon.

  A blur in front. She bumped into someone and looked up. “Sorry!”

  It was Jessica Boyce, and Marie immediately thought of peanuts. “Oh, Jessica. Sorry, I was…”

  “Reading?” Jessica asked. “You’ve probably got a lot to catch up on, I expect.” Jessica’s eyes were tired, her hair out of place, her expression disenchanted. “They told me last night. Congratulations.”

  “Oh, Jessica, I’m really sorry.” There were a few things she could have said. If it had been up to me… They should have… But the words wouldn’t have been truthful. Jessica was no dummy, and Marie’s disappointment at being initially excluded had been obvious to anyone.

  Jessica waved one hand like she was swatting a fly. “Eh, whatever. It’s done now. They did what they had to do.”

  “You’re not mad?” Marie asked.

  “At you? No, not your fault.” Jessica pointed down the hallway. “Hey, are you heading to the role-playing exercise?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Marie answered.

  “Walk with me, I’m going there too.” Jessica held out an elbow. “Let’s make a united entrance, shall we? You and me.” Marie hesitantly put her hand in Jessica’s arm.

  Jessica’s attitude was surprisingly magnanimous, given the situation. The two women continued down the hallway together, arm in arm. “Very kind of you,” Marie offered. “I don’t think I understand. Why are you—”

  “Still attending training?” Jessica glanced toward Marie and kept walking. “I have a job to do. I’m now CAPCOM. Earth-based team support. Communications to you guys in the field.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “Maybe not okay. It hurts, but I can live with it.”

  They walked silently down the hallway and turned a corner. Marie brought them to an abrupt stop at the entrance to the training room. Inside, the rest of the team stood in a circle of conversation.

  Once they walked into the room, all eyes would turn. She couldn’t imagine what Jessica must be feeling. If it were me, I’d be hiding in the darkest closet I could find. She turned to face Jessica.

  “What?” Jessica asked.

  Marie spoke from the heart, clearly and forcefully. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

  Jessica provided a weak smile and shrugged one shoulder. “Eh, I have my moments.” She put a hand on Marie’s shoulder. “It’s all yours now. You make us proud, okay?”

  Marie nodded and held tightly to Jessica’s arm, and they walked through the doorway together.

  6

  Bosons

  The average person doesn’t ponder the role of bosons in the universe while floating naked in a sensory-deprivation tank, but no one had ever called Nala Pasquier average. She floated in salt water, making no movements in the dark, coffinlike chamber. While her body relaxed, her mind raced.

  The waves. The point of light. What were they? Come on, scientist, this stuff is not that hard. A fucking chimp could do it.

  Sensory deprivation calmed the senses, allowing the mind to focus and develop deep insight. Apparently, not this time.

  Focus on bosons, the framework of the universe.

  She was close to an answer, but it would need to be drawn from the deep recesses of her mind. Every physics student knows there are five bosons: gluon, photon, W, Z, and Higgs. Yet now, there was a sixth: a particle that shaped space itself. At least, that’s how Core had explained it.

  Our friendly neighborhood cyborg. Provides the clues but neglects to mention the details. Some friend.

  Core spoke in vague generalities. The new HP boson was the glue that held space together—or more like an elastic strap, because space could not only warp into gravity wells, as Einstein had postulated more than a century before, it could also stretch and compress.

  Learning how to compress space had taken humans to the distant star VY Canis Majoris, where advanced alien technology—and Core—had been waiting. That had been months ago, and they had made significant progress since. Her lab was ground zero. At the flip of a switch, she could expand an infinitesimal dimension that only a quark would notice into so
mething room-sized, or larger. And when she did, normal space responded by compressing. It had no choice; the HP boson enforced it.

  The HP, or hyperbolic paraboloid boson, was named because of its tendency to bend space into a saddle shape, or as some call it, a Pringles potato chip. Geometrically speaking, a hyperbolic paraboloid is the opposite of a sphere. It’s a curved surface that is open in every direction and never intersects itself.

  Now that physicists had learned of the existence of the HP boson, they had quickly determined one of its intrinsic properties: HP bosons are naturally attracted to quarks, the fundamental particle that makes up protons, neutrons, atoms and molecules. Pair an HP boson with a quark, and they warp space a little. Pair a few trillion bosons with a few trillion quarks, and they warp space a lot. We call it gravity.

  But the real discovery was when HP bosons were allowed to roam free without any quark pairings. Then, the boson worked its magic, expanding quantum space into an open structure—a Pringles kind of structure.

  Nala knew all of this. She’d proposed half of it, her name now commonly circulated in physics publications. Free HP bosons could be tamed, managed, put to useful purposes. She could already create 4-D space; maybe there were other applications, too. Artificial gravity? That would be pretty cool.

  But before they could install artificial gravity plates at the International Space Station, there were problems to overcome. The HP boson was probably responsible for the waves she’d seen in her lab. The pinprick of light, too. There really was nothing else to blame.

  Or was there? Could it be the baryon-to-boson ratio?

  That was what Jan thought. Nala’s partner in physics was a Dutchman with a name pronounced Yawn, as she routinely teased. Jan was the theorist, Nala the experimentalist, and Jan’s latest theory was that the density of mass played a role in the stability of space. Nala had been measuring density for weeks to find out.

  And where was Core on all this brand-new science? Silent. They had submitted questions, but the answers that came back were either vague or the classic cyborg bullshit line: You’ll learn, in time. Core might represent the combined intelligence of a hundred civilizations. Its moon-sized cyborg innards might be more advanced than any computer on Earth. But as a science colleague, it was coming up short on details.