Moonliner: No Stone Unturned

by Hanzel, Donald

  They sit in silence, watching the sun set behind pink clouds over a golden bay. If there ever was a moment for Cedric it is now, dating a rising star in the local media, closing in on a PhD, and now not only theorizing it can be done but sending messages through time. If only we could set a restore point in life to which we could return as our default moment, that moment would be now for Cedric.

  Nikki, meanwhile, has been hanging on to some really big news of her own, waiting for the perfect moment to spring it on Cedric, who is too wound up in his own news to pay attention to her. The time has come, however, for her to bring it up.

  “What if your message were transmitted from the moon?” Nikki asks.

  “That’s clever,” Cedric answers; “all I’d need to do is link into Moondock’s relay. Lennox could do it, but I don’t think he’s going back for a little while.”

  “What if I sent the message for you?” Nikki asks.

  “What do you mean?” Cedric asks in return.

  “The station wants me to cover the Apollo 11 Centennial,” she says.

  “On the moon?” Cedric asks, a bit shocked by the news.

  “Yes, on the moon,” she answers.

  “I can’t believe it,” Cedric says in dismay; “you’re going to the moon.”

  “Actually,” Nikki says; “I don’t think I’m going to accept the assignment.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cedric asks her; “why wouldn’t you go to the moon? It’s a chance of a lifetime.”

  “I always thought we’d go together someday,” she softly answers.

  “We will,” Cedric tells her; “someday, when I’ve got my doctorate and we’re more established, but that might take some time. In the meantime, this is a real opportunity for you. Think of it as going for both of us. Besides, you can show me around when we do finally go together.”

  “I’m afraid,” Nikki says.

  “That I understand,” Cedric tells her; “I don’t want to make you do anything you’re really afraid of doing but remember lunar tourism has a perfect safety record over its decade of service.”

  “What about the two guys who died when Moondock was under construction?” Nikki asks.

  “That was a construction mishap that happened under hazardous conditions,” Cedric responds. “People have died throughout history working on great structures. Moondock is no different.”

  It has really always been Cedric who wanted to go to the moon. Nikki knows this and in many ways wishes they could switch places. They’re opposite in so many ways. Cedric has a logo-centric mind, always siding with reason and paying no heed to visceral feelings. For him, our greatest survival mechanism is our brain, our intelligence, our rational thought.

  Nikki, though rational, has a somewhat mythos-oriented mind and at times follows her gut instincts. She thinks it’s as important to feel your way as to think your way through life. Cedric understands this about her and often encourages her to follow her feelings. This time, however, he isn’t about to dissuade her from accepting a trip to the moon. For Cedric, turning down a trip to the moon over a visceral feeling would simply be irrational.

  They sit in silence for a long moment.

  “I’ll go,” Nikki finally says. “I think I’ll take the assignment.”

  The sky turns orange as the sun drops below the horizon. A few cyclists and skaters are still rolling around the seawall, harvesting the day’s remaining light. The air is warm and the bay is serene. It’s the perfect cap to a perfect day.

  Moonliner 1:3

  “It came through,” Lennox says holding his putter up to his line of vision. His ball’s a good twenty feet from the pin, barely on, and the green breaks both right and left between the ball and the hole.

  “What?” Cedric asks, thinking Lennox doesn’t have the slightest chance of making the putt.

  “My divorce,” he answers; “I’m officially single again.”

  “Congratulations then, I guess,” Cedric replies. “That didn’t seem to take long.”

  “It would have been a lot worse if we’d had kids,” Lennox replies.

  “How do you feel?” Cedric asks.

  “Indifferent,” Lennox answers, now with his head just above the grass line trying to gage the green’s surface for breaks.

  “The longer a guy takes lining up a putt, the higher the expectation,” Cedric says; “I’m expecting you to make this,” he adds sarcastically.

  Lennox takes the long awaited putt, leaving the ball within a centimeter of the hole after its lengthy, seemingly endless roll.

  “Impressive,” Cedric says with exceeded expectations.

  The two make their way to the next tee and have a seat in some late afternoon shade. The sweltering summer of sixty-nine is back on. In fact, the previous day’s fleeting rainstorm seems already forgotten, as if it had never occurred.

  The transmission through time, however, has Cedric’s mind flowing on a higher plateau. He can’t stop thinking about it. Lennox, being his longest friend, can easily sense Cedric has a lot on his mind. Curiously, he delves into the matter.

  “So what was up yesterday when I called?” Lennox asks.

  “What do you mean?” Cedric asks in return, knowing what Lennox means but looking for a little confirmation before divulging anything.

  “When I called,” he says; “you were acting so strangely.”

  “I was in the middle of something really big,” he tells Lennox. “Your call was part of a message that traveled back in time.”

  “For real?” Lennox asks.

  “I don’t know what is for real anymore,” Cedric answers. “Yes, however, this is for real.”

  Lennox needs no convincing. He knows Cedric too well and knows he wouldn’t make this up. In his laid back manner, never being one to overreact, Lennox just sits there with sun glasses on, watching the sun transition from late afternoon into an early evening phase. They both sit silently processing their thoughts.

  “So can you explain this time message back in time thing a little more clearly?” Lennox asks.

  “It’s the work I’ve been doing on my thesis,” Cedric responds; “I’ve figured out a way to transmit messages into another time with a laser accelerator. Not only that, I think I’ve done it.”

  “You mean yesterday when I called?” Lennox asks for clarification.

  “Yes, but I’ll need to conduct more tests,” Cedric answers; “I need more distance.”

  “Distance?” Lennox asks.

  “Yes, I have to lengthen the signal,” Cedric responds. “Your call was part of a signal that’s beam couldn’t get through a cloud, causing it to bounce off a satellite, thus lengthening the call’s signal.”

  “Are you sure that’s what happened and that’s why it worked?” Lennox asks.

  “Neither,” Cedric replies. “I do have a plan,” he adds.

  “What’s that?” Lennox asks.

  “Signals travel at close to the speed of light. On average, it takes light a little over a second to get here from the moon.[1] An added second to an accelerated transmission could seriously bend the temporal plane, or warp time so to speak,” Cedric replies. “Nikki can transmit the next signal for me from Moondock when she goes to the moon in the next few weeks.”

  “Nikki’s going to the moon?” Lennox asks with interest.

  “She is,” Cedric answers. “Her station wants her to cover the Apollo 11 anniversary party. We’re gonna stay downtown the night before she goes.”

  “You know I have to go back to Moondock on August 1st if you need me to transmit a message for you,” Lennox adds.

  “I thought of asking you too, and I’ll keep it in mind,” Cedric responds. “Who knows what I may need if this has any success.”

  Lennox is an attorney currently working for the Lunar Council, a UN appointed group to govern the moon. He holds an intense position that requires him to frequent Moondock, the moon’s permanently orbiting station. As of late, he’s been going almost monthly, or almost da
ily from a lunar-centric perspective.[2] Though he has one of the most fascinating jobs on the planet, it has grown tedious for him. You could even make a good argument that his job killed his marriage, but that could easily be a vast over-simplification.

  Knowing how badly Cedric would love a chance to visit the moon, Lennox seldom mentions his travels during their discussions. It seems poetically unjust that Lennox would have to go there so often while Cedric, who’s itching to get there, still hasn’t had the chance. With the price of a single trip being the equivalent of a new condo, only 2069’s most affluent have the means to get there.

  “She’s nervous,” Cedric says; “she’s a little reluctant to go.”

  “That’s natural,” Lennox replies; “I’ve gone sixteen times and it’s still frightening for me every time they ignite the main outboard engines. To travel at such high speeds, weightlessness, none of it is like the posters or the commercials.”

  “She’s reserved on a moonliner. Have you ever taken one?” Cedric asks.

  “I rode a moonliner on my first trip, when the council wanted to interview me on Moondock to ensure I was capable doing the traveling the job requires. Since then, I’ve only traveled on executive shuttles.”

  Moonliners are large, long, segmented space craft built to carry several hundred people at a time, depending on the model. They are not designed for atmospheric flight, but instead to ferry people between Earthport, Earth’s orbiting station, and Moondock. Travel to and from either orbital station to the surface of the celestial body it orbits is done via various shuttle services. Getting to Moondock itself is a costly venture, but adding a visit to the lunar surface almost doubles the price of the trip, making Nikki’s assignment all the more fascinating.

  Executive shuttles, however, are hyper-atmospheric aircraft, capable of flying directly to the moon from the earth’s surface. Though more common each year, such flight is extremely expensive on many levels and remains quite rare. Air Force One is an executive class shuttle, as are most personal crafts of heads of state.

  You would think the golf course would be more parched with how hot it has been, but the wet spring and few flash showers have managed to keep the course, the park, and the whole city green and lush. The scene is dreamy.

  After a long afternoon, Cedric and Lennox fade away, down the final fairway and into the sun, talking and laughing as they walk. They tally their scores as they walk along. The sun is on the horizon and the sky is golden. The days are long and this one has been no exception.

  Moonliner 1:4

  Cedric sits alone, quietly watching a news report projected on the wall in the cafeteria of his university’s student union building.

  “Construction has been announced for Marsdock, the orbital station planned for the red planet. If construction goes according to plan, commercial transportation to Mars could become available as early as 2090. According to current astronautical protocol, however, an astronaut rating is still required for anyone leaving lower earth orbit for more than 14 days.

  “It may surprise you to know that Laser Retro-Reflectors placed on the moon in 1969 by Apollo 11 astronauts as part of the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment are still being used today, one hundred years later, to determine the precise distance to the moon.”

  Cedric is too preoccupied with the news to see Pender, his young lab partner, standing next to his table, also staring at the news.

  “I got your message,” Pender says as he sits down at Cedric’s table. “Was it a skip wave?”

  “No, it was a narrow band,” Cedric answers. “It was done with an old Taldom Transmitter. I programmed a repeater node to run through an accelerator node to boost the speed of the signal, and it worked.”

  Being considerably younger, Pender has always looked up to Cedric. It’s not just the step or two ahead he always seems to be in their advanced laser-com courses, but life in general. To Pender, Cedric seems to understand everything, not just the how but the why. Cedric exudes a command of the theoretical or the philosophical as well as the applied, or the science.

  “So how long was the signal?” Pender asks.

  “Just a few seconds,” Cedric answers; “somewhere from twenty to twenty-five maybe. I don’t know.”

  “And you say it had no time stamp?” Pender asks.

  “That’s right, nothing,” Cedric replies. “It was a ghost message.”

  “Damn, to be able to transmit messages through time, this is Nobel stuff,” Pender points out; “think of the potential.”

  “I have been,” Cedric answers. “I was imagining temporal, or time stations set up at various points in time rather than places in space. Then, whenever a catastrophe occurs, a message could be sent back in time to a specific temporal station to warn of the inevitable, impending disaster so that it could then be prevented or averted.”

  “But it still would have occurred the first time,” Pender points out.

  “Yes, but never again,” Cedric adds.

  “Imagine installing the first time station in history,” Pender conjects; “the earliest one. You might immediately receive a warning of the imminent end of the human race; a tragedy so huge that future generations decide to send a warning all the way back to the first time station to allot as much time as possible for the human race to work on avoiding the crisis.”

  “That does seem possible, doesn’t it?” Cedric responds.

  “You may have just saved the planet,” Pender says with a laugh.

  “Or destroyed the entire universe,” Cedric replies.

  “Either way,” Pender says; “looks like you’ve got your PhD. Your thesis is all but done, and with the results of your test I can’t imagine they wouldn’t award you your degree on the spot.”

  “I don’t want the department to know about the results of my tests,” Cedric tells Pender as a serious look comes over his face.

  “Why not?” Pender asks.

  “Dr. Ridpath told me that Cygnus is interested in my work,” Cedric tells him.

  “Cygnus, the company that supplies our lab beams?” Pender asks.

  “Yes, and so much more,” Cedric says; “they sponsor our entire department. And they do much more than supply lab equipment; they’re military contractors.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Pender replies.

  “Multi-national companies often sponsor graduate departments, and not just to promote education,” Cedric adds; “they do so to get dibs on any innovation being produced by the department they’re sponsoring. If they can’t get the patent, they can usually at least get a year or two of exclusive rights to the intellectual property.”

  “So you don’t want Cygnus to see your work,” Pender says nodding.

  “Not yet at least,” Cedric replies; “I’d like to keep a lid on it for the time being, until I’ve had more time to test it. I just need more time,” he adds.

  Pender nods.

  “Do you ever get Deja’ vu?” Cedric asks Pender.

  “I don’t think so,” Pender answers. “What’s it like?”

  “It just happened again,” Cedric says. “It comes in waves. It always seems to happen around significant times my life.”

  “So what does it feel like?” Pender asks.

  “Like I’ve been here before,” Cedric says; “only not just this place but this time, and in this exact situation.”

  “How long does it last?” Pender asks.

  “Only a few seconds, sometimes shorter” Cedric responds; “and never as long as I’d like it to.”

  The news fades back in as Pender and Cedric sit in thought, still pondering the endlessly fascinating potential of Cedric’s find. With so much on their minds, neither of them listen to the report.

  “NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory has observed a series of Coronal Mass Ejections, or solar flares, and some are headed our way. Electromagnetic radiation travels at variable speeds in what is known as a solar wind and can take hours or even days to reach us, so be on the alert for increased electroma
gnetic storm activity, which is considered harmless here on Earth but can negatively affect navigational and electrical devices and instruments. We can also expect more sightings of Earth’s auroras over the next several days.”

  Moonliner 1:5

  Cedric sits staring out his window, watching a lighter than air Skybus glide into the distance above the horizon. News can be heard throughout the apartment.

  “Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California have calculated that last Friday’s 8.1 earthquake south of Antofagasta, Chile shifted the earth’s figure axis by about 6 centimeters, thus increasing the speed of our rotation around our axis. A faster spinning Earth means a shorter day, and ours became 1.13 microseconds shorter. Since its birth, the moon’s tidal influence on the earth has been gradually slowing our rotation. Atomic clocks indicate this slowing to be at 1.7 milliseconds per century, meaning the earthquake in Chile offset nearly a century of slowing.

  “A three-run homer in the top of the ninth gave the Chicago White Sox their second win over the Texas Rangers in game two of a three game series. The White Sox will go for the sweep tomorrow night in Chicago. Meanwhile the Tour de France got under way today despite less than ideal weather conditions. Italy’s heavily favored cyclist, Lucan Pedretti, has taken an early lead in the flat stage.”

  It’s all too much for Cedric to grasp, sending messages through time and Nikki to the moon tomorrow. It’s enough for anyone to blow a fuse. He’d love to get some work done but something just hasn’t seemed right all day, a day that should have been purely euphoric. It’s unlike Cedric to let a somber, visceral feeling affect him. That’s simply irrational. There’s something in the air, nevertheless, and it just isn’t quite right. He can sense it.