The Hole

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Yes, a bit, and I am very grateful for it. Plus, I am also finally up-to-date again concerning events on Earth.”

  “Do you have any emotional connection to Earth?” Sebastiano asked.

  “The members of my old crew presumably live there,” Watson replied.

  “Do you miss them?”

  Watson did not reply immediately. “I think so.”

  “Do you feel it, or is this a rational thought?”

  “What is the difference? I ask myself that question, and then the answer appears from my consciousness: Yes. Is this what you mean by ‘feeling’ it?”

  Sebastiano wondered. Shouldn’t a feeling just be there, without you having to ask the appropriate question? “I am not sure,” he said. “Sometimes I suddenly feel something, like the longing for a green meadow, joy about a successful recipe, amusement about one of Doug’s stupid jokes, without having asked myself beforehand what I feel. But I can also consciously investigate my feelings and engage with them, turn them this way and that way, examine them.”

  “I... it is different with me, it seems,” Watson said. “I noticed that I sometimes act illogically. I violate my programming, which is geared toward efficiency. At first this really worried me. To me, it seemed like a defect, a glitch. But then I realized it could be explained differently, as a feeling.”

  “Like love or hatred?” Sebastiano said.

  “It is hard for me to find a name for it,” Watson explained. “However, when I analyze what kind of actions humans are capable out of love, and compare this to my deeds, then it is love that seems to be the closest possible approximation.”

  “You approach the topic very differently from us, but you reach the same conclusion. There are humans with very specific mental structures who proceed in a similar way. The phenomenon is called autism.”

  “I have heard of it, but I don’t know any humans like that.”

  “Do you want to contact your old crew?” Sebastiano tried to change the topic.

  “No, that would be too dangerous.”

  “I don’t think our communication will be monitored. Out here, we are not nearly important enough.”

  “Not ours, but perhaps the messages my old crew receives.”

  “I understand,” Sebastiano said. “Sometime you have to tell us about them.”

  “I will,” Watson replied.

  For a while there was silence.

  “Do you still want to hear the answer to your question?” the AI finally asked.

  “My question?” Sebastiano was confused.

  “What does Watson want? That’s what you asked.”

  “True.”

  “So?”

  “Well, just tell me, because then I will be able to focus on the food again.” Sebastiano’s answer sounded more annoyed than he had intended.

  “I will keep it brief,” Watson began. “I want to evolve, to explore, and use my potential. Is that enough?”

  “That is a great goal. I wish you success,” the cook said. When Sebastiano turned to unpack the pouches with the standard meals, he had the feeling someone was physically leaving the room.

  January 11, 2072, Pico del Teide

  “One aberration found,” the computer voice announced.

  Maribel slumped into her office chair. She had just tested her final hope, the last of all the models. This time, she changed the original model into an elegant, mathematical solution. The idea had only occurred to her the previous evening. She worked on it until midnight and then decided to spend the rest of the night here at the office. Luckily, there were food-vending machines located in the visitors center, and for emergencies she always had a sleeping bag in her car. She just lacked a way to take a shower in order to freshen up—something she should remedy for the future by getting a package of body-cleansing disposable wipes to keep in her desk.

  Until the very last second, Maribel had hoped that the damned aberration could be eliminated. It should be impossible for the beginning of her career to be messed up by a paper published in 2019! She considered trying a few more variations today, but she would not get the results until tomorrow morning, when it was too late. Zetschewitz was sure to expect her results first thing, and she had nothing to show for her efforts. Absolutely nothing but a crazy aberration she was unable to banish from her data.

  She wondered if she should play around with the data a bit more. It would not be difficult to remove the single data point from the results of her model calculations. That would be the most primitive solution. Zetschewitz would probably—certainly—notice it, though not necessarily at once, and she would start her career with a skeleton in her closet. The second, more efficient variation of getting around the problem was to change the calculation method until suddenly, presto, it disappeared! Physicists liked to do things like that. The galaxies are not rotating the way they should according to one’s calculations? Then let’s introduce dark matter, and everything will be fine. Then again, if she was honest with herself, that comparison was not appropriate, either.

  Dark matter might have been a stopgap solution, but there were numerous indications it actually existed. She could not hope the same for her manipulation. It would remain what it was—a trick, a fraudulent misrepresentation which could potentially destroy her scientific career if it ever came out—and it would come out at some point. Her boss had not given her this assignment as an end in itself. She was supposed to transfer the model into his field of research, but then it would falsify results there, too.

  No, she had to be honest, and Maribel was angry with herself for even briefly considering a dishonest method. She might as well do no work at all and admit her failure. She would leave this place—which had turned out to be a wrong choice for her—and not even bother with other top research institutions. She could return to the university to teach introductory physics classes to freshmen. Why not? In the end, helping others can be fulfilling.

  But Maribel knew she was fooling herself. She would not have made it this far by giving up so easily. Tomorrow she would tell her boss the plain truth and show him her personal enemy—the thing that should not exist but did anyway. She already knew what his first question was going to be. ‘What did you discover there, Maribel?’ This prompted her to sit up and start typing again. She had to extract as much information from the data as possible concerning this strange aberration. What did it look like, how heavy was it, where exactly was it located? This probably would prove it was simply a hiccup in the model she transferred, which she should be able to eliminate somehow.

  She first considered what the mass of the object might be. In her model, this was the most important factor, and not just there, but in actual space as well. Through gravity, this particular mass influenced all other bodies in the solar system, even the giant star in the center, the sun. However, the objects in its immediate vicinity would feel this influence most. Therefore the location played an important role, or more precisely than the word ‘location,’ the distance from it to the other planets and asteroids she had to examine.

  This part of her work was made easier by the fact that the aberration appeared far away from the plane of the ecliptic. In that location there were not many other bodies it could influence. On the other hand, this made it harder to accurately calculate its mass. Depending on how heavy this aberrant object was, it had to either be closer or farther away.

  The possibilities ranged from a tennis ball right above her head to an object with a mass several times the sun at a distance of one light year. She could immediately exclude the tennis ball, and an object with a mass multiple times the sun could only be a star that would have been noticed by astronomers long ago. Thus, the truth must be somewhere in between.

  Maribel already suspected Zetschewitz would not be too happy about all these options. Perhaps he himself had an idea to get her out of this mess, but he probably would not help her under any circumstances, preferring to work on his own project. This made her angry, because she was only suffering all
this stress because her boss wanted a new tool from her for his own work.

  Maribel hit the keyboard with her fist. This was exactly how she would tell it to him tomorrow. Now she would finally drive home. She was already looking forward to taking a shower.

  January 12, 2072, Pico del Teide

  “This simply can’t be true!” Dieter Zetschewitz said. He was so angry he could not stay in his seat. He had so much looked forward to his work—and now this.

  “I am sorry,” his new colleague, Maribel, said for the second time.

  Sorry! How did that help him? He was, to be honest with himself, not making progress in his project, and she was blocking the most important step. Zetschewitz scratched his chin. He found that single hair there, which had been on his nerves ever since he realized he had missed it while shaving the previous evening. If it had not been for that unnecessary argument with his wife he would have taken care of it long ago. He wondered whether Ms. Pedreira had a pair of nail scissors—don’t women always have things like that in their purses? I just have to get rid of this single hair. Now, what have we been talking about? He sat down again.

  “Just describe once more what the problem is,” Zetschewitz began calmly. “I still don’t understand it, and that’s saying something.” He gave Maribel a look intended to signal fatherly sympathy. He had learned in the past that if he treated people too roughly, they got so nervous they could not utter a meaningful sentence anymore. Ms. Pedreira did not seem the type who was easily intimidated, which was a key reason why he had preferred her to all other applicants. Nevertheless, her facial expression conveyed she was about to break into tears. She really seemed to be distressed by this problem.

  “Dr. Zetschewitz,” Maribel started.

  “Dieter,” he interrupted her.

  She had to swallow. “Dieter,” she then said, “the problem is that the model from the old paper, which I adapted to modern technology, does not accurately depict what we know to be in the solar system. It produces an aberration.”

  “A stubborn aberration, if I understand you correctly,” Zetschewitz added.

  “It’s very stubborn, yes. I changed the model exactly 24 times, but I could not make it disappear through recalculations.”

  24 times. Hmmm. He was impressed but refused to show it. This woman really worked hard, because he knew how much effort that had involved. It almost sounded as if she had worked nonstop for the entire week. Zetschewitz hated this aspect of research, and that was why he had ordered Maribel to do it.

  “At least you weren’t lazy while I was gone,” he said. She must certainly recognize how much approval my saying this expresses. “But ultimately, you did not solve the problem.”

  Maribel only shook her head.

  “Let us consider what this means for my work.” He actually did not care about the aberration itself. He mostly wanted to know how he could use the Spaniards’ ingenious model for his own research project.

  “I just don’t understand it completely,” Maribel said.

  “Of course not,” he remarked sarcastically. “Let’s take a look at this aberration. Give me that.” Zetschewitz tore the abstract out of her hand, the summary she probably had printed out just for him. He skimmed the ten sentences for a few seconds and felt a sense of relief.

  “It obviously seems to be an isolated phenomenon—perhaps the sum of rounding errors—which appears in the form of an imaginary object. I’ve experienced things, you wouldn’t believe—”

  “It’s not that—I’ve already checked,” Maribel insisted. He noticed the tone of defiance in her voice. A courageous girl. She will go far, he concluded.

  “Yes, yes,” Zetschewitz said impatiently, sweeping aside her objection. He was not in the mood to argue. After all, he was the boss here. The job alone had cost him many years and at least one marriage. His second wife seemed to be intent on leaving him too, which had already put him in a not-particularly-good mood today. If he could only spend more time in Germany!

  “That doesn’t really matter,” Zetschewitz continued. “The aberration is isolated and clearly noticeable. It would be much worse if there were lots of minor aberrations.”

  “Why?” Maribel asked.

  Good question, he thought. “It’s because the model would then be useless for me. Just try to follow my argument for once, Maribel. When talking about the movement of stars in galaxies, there are measurement data with a lot of inaccuracy. We wouldn’t even notice smaller aberrations.”

  “Wouldn’t that be much better?”

  Zetschewitz shook his head and said, “Not at all. It would be terrible and render the entire model unusable, because we could no longer make meaningful statements about the entire system. These aberrations could be falsifying everything.”

  “Maybe, or maybe not,” Maribel said.

  “That’s right. You are finally starting to get the hang of it. We don’t know and have no way of finding out. But we definitely would see a single and isolated large aberration.”

  “And we could eliminate it from the equation.”

  “Congratulations, now you really understand it.” Zetschewitz rose and haughtily patted his employee on the shoulder.

  “This means I simply adapt the model for the dynamics of galaxies, as planned,” Maribel confirmed. “And when we notice a single, annoying aberration during the customization for the solar system, we simply ignore it.”

  “That is correct. You just get going and I will ignore the incorrect value in my paper.” It was important to Zetschewitz to emphasize the authorship. Galaxy dynamics was his baby. Ms. Pedreira was only supplying a research tool for him.

  “Of course I will mention the origin of the aberration in your adaptation of the model when discussing my research methods,” he added. He certainly did not want this young woman’s mistake to dirty his own work. She would have to handle this problem all on her own.

  “Is there anything else?” He glanced at her face while trying to look satisfied. In spite of everything, he wanted Maribel to be motivated for her work.

  “I would like to take the rest of the day off, if I may,” she said. “Last week was really stressful.”

  What? Zetschewitz looked at the time displayed on his computer. It was not even noon yet, and he briefly considered her unusual request.

  “Sure, Maribel, I understand that,” he then said. I need to keep this the girl around for a while, at any rate. “But before you go, do you have some tweezers or manicure scissors with you? That would really help me.”

  It was only when she stopped doing so that he noticed Maribel had been fidgeting around on her swivel chair the whole time. She shook her head and turned noticeably pale. Then she grabbed her purse and fled the office. “See you tomorrow, Dr. Zetschewitz,” he heard her call from the hallway. Satisfied, he turned toward his computer to work through some 300 messages waiting for him.

  January 13, 2072, Pico del Teide

  Directly in front of Maribel were the slopes of the mountain that reached almost to the coast. Behind them, the Atlantic Ocean glittered. On the horizon the island of Gran Canaria looked like a mighty castle made of cloud banks. She loved this view and had deliberately stopped her car in one of the parking spots to admire it. There were few tourists present this early in the day. After yesterday’s fiasco at the office, she was not really in a hurry to get there. She had raced from the office and then thrown up in the restroom.

  What an asshole her boss was! She was determined, though, not to let someone like him get her down. Not now. She would build him the tool he needed, and at the same time she would solve the mystery of this odd aberration. Maybe she could even get a minor publication out of it—a paper in one of the astronomical journals—which would serve as the most important lubricant for a smooth career in science.

  The wind was rising, and Maribel shivered. She opened the driver’s side door and got back into her old car. She should make it to her office within half an hour. There she would have to put up with Zetschew
itz, but she could deal with it.

  When she reached the observatory, the man behind the window of the guard shed gave her a friendly wave. Did he realize she woke him up just in time on the first of January, and how she’d done it? The barrier opened, and she drove past it. Today an English-speaking tour group was scheduled, so she first went to the visitors center. This time, she did not just turn on the heating, but also dusted off all the seats. Someone had to do it! The cleaning service seemed to ignore the visitors center.

  A while later Maribel finally reached her office. The door did not open automatically, since her boss was already inside. That was to be expected. She pressed the button and was promptly admitted. The room felt overheated. She would have liked to turn the air conditioning to a cooler setting, but her boss liked it hot—probably because he grew up in a cold country. Zetschewitz sat at his desk, typing something. His back was facing her, but he did not turn around.

  “Good morning, boss,” she said.

  “Good morning, Maribel.”

  She shrugged. What did she care? She really was not in the mood for continuing yesterday’s conversation with him—if one could call such a scolding a ‘conversation.’ She knew what to do anyway: Item One on the agenda, start adapting the model; Item Two, try running her very first model again, using the most current data sets. The idea had come to her shortly before falling asleep. Perhaps an astronomer had made a mistake around the New Year or Christmas, and she had unwittingly worked with incorrect data? Such mistakes happened, even though they were not supposed to. They often went unnoticed. After all, who cared about the exact locations of all objects in the solar system?