CHAPTER 29
UN Quantum Corps
Western Command Base
Table Top Mountain, Idaho (USA)
February 20, 2111 (U.T.)
2130 hours
Johnny Winger examined the Symborg master bot on the imager screen. The thing was securely tucked away in a chamber at Central Containment, surrounded by electron beam injectors primed and ready to fire in case something went wrong.
“From the outside, it doesn’t look all that special,” Lofton remarked. “Multi-lobed casing, lots of effectors, propulsors to make any ANAD proud. Nothing to get excited about. I just hope this is the real master and not some dumb replicant.”
Winger wasn’t so sure. “It may look plain Jane, but this baby’s got comms you wouldn’t believe. It must have one hell of a processor inside and with the link back to Config Zero, it can do pirouettes around our stuff. We’ve got those disentanglers up and running, I hope.”
Luis Principal was at the console running the imager. “Primed and ready, General. Everything coming in and out is getting scrambled, as far as I can tell.”
“Good. Keep it that way. I don’t want Symborg here waking up with orders from Config Zero to go berserk.”
Lofton agreed. “Keep the bastard isolated, solitary confinement…that’s the key. Luis, keep those disentanglers going through system check every five minutes.”
“Already dialed in,” Principal told them. “I just to want to go a little smaller and trace those qubit arrays inside that processor—“ he waved his imager cursor over a tiny dot beating away like a heart inside the casing. “—assuming that is the processor. For all I know, it could be a coiling coil.”
“See if you can get a readout on its config library…that’s what always made Symborg so powerful. He could be anyone or anything. Perfect for your average ordinary, garden-variety messiah.”
The investigation went on for a few minutes, until Winger’s wristpad chirped and a small face appeared on the screen. It was Colonel Jaubert, from the Quartier-General, a staff aide to UNSAC.
“Got to take this one,” Winger announced. He buzzed himself out of containment and found a quiet corner in the corridor outside. “What is it, Colonel?”
Jaubert explained how UNSAC was setting up a vidcon between Table Top, the Secretary-General in New York and UNIFORCE Paris. “In ten minutes, sir.”
That didn’t leave Winger a whole lot of time to put together some kind of report on what they were finding with the Symborg bot. He went to a nearby office.
The vidcon started promptly at 0800 hours. Jurgen Steiner was his usual dour, abrupt self, a bit pricklier than usual. You could always count on UNSAC to liven up any conversation with Teutonic curses and guttural grunts. The man always looked and sounded like a bear from the Black Forest, just awakened from hibernation.
“Give me the rundown, Winger. What have you got there?”
Winger didn’t have much. “We’re pretty early in the examination, sir. Just some basics: Symborg’s master bot has a multi-lobed, hardened and segmented outer casing, dodecahedral in form, with propulsor rings at several locations around the circumference. Multiple effector joints in both hemispheres and replication fold planes aligned equatorially as well as longitudinally….” He ran down all the structural and physical details, the basic measurements, as the Lab had been determining them since Symborg had been placed in containment.
UNSAC saw the specs on his own display in Paris, grunting and hmmm’ing and fiddling with the ends of his moustache as he perused the data.
“What about inside the casing: processor, memory, config drivers, that sort of thing?”
“We’re still trying to crack the processor, sir. The qubit arrays are protected, so we’re trying to be careful. Lofton’s done a preliminary rundown on configs…there are literally thousands of them. But we’ve just started analysis. It’ll take months. This bot’s capable of just about anything. “
UNSAC glared into the screen. Winger had the impression that if the right haptics were available, the Commissioner would have reached right through the screen with his hands.
“Just so you know, General, I’m proposing that Symborg be quarantined at Table Top…permanently. You got the facilities, the people, the experience. I don’t want this bot ever getting loose again. Do whatever you have to…even if it means picking the damn thing apart atom by atom. Personally, I don’t care if you zap the bastard to kingdom come…but Q2 wants to learn everything they can before that happens. By the way, the SG’s joining us on this vidcon in a few minutes...live from New York.”
Winger knew just how Steiner felt. The Symborg bot had caused a lot of grief for Quantum Corps in recent months. Now, they had a chance to put the little monster away for good…once they learned what made it tick.
“Sir, what’s to stop Config Zero from spinning off another Symborg?”
UNSAC’s lips tightened perceptibly. “You are, General. You and Quantum Corps. I want you to figure out how every friggin’ proton and electron works in that bot. You learn that and you can develop countermeasures for anything Config Zero might do.”
Winger was about to mention that now Config Zero had finally absorbed Rene and who knew what additional surprises it might have up its nanobotic sleeve, but the Incoming Message chime sounded on his wristpad.
It was the Secretary-General. Kwame Kavaii looked tired, even haggard, like he hadn’t slept in days. Winger could see a fireplace in the background, with a smoldering fire guttering faint tendrils of smoke…the SG was messaging from his apartment. It was late, very late.
“I have one question for you,” Kavaii said. He shuffled something in his lap, nearly spilled a drink. “I was just reading your report on the operation, Winger. You’ve got disentanglers in place all around Kipwezi. You encountered Config Zero and your daughter’s disappeared. Now you’ve got Symborg in containment…but where the hell is Config Zero? Is he still at Kipwezi?”
Winger had gone over the intel with Lofton earlier. “Q2 says the best evidence places Config Zero somewhere still inside the African Sanctuary. Likely not at Kipwezi…decoherence wake analysis of comms going into and out of the area supports that finding. But there’s no factual reason to think the swarm has left the Sanctuary…we’ve seen or heard nothing from local Sanctuary Patrol stations indicating otherwise.”
Kavaii considered that. “I want to keep that bastard bottled up in the Sanctuary. Steiner, what’s happening with the Quarantine Project?”
UNSAC went over the status of all elements, point by point, squirting off the updates to New York as he did so…ANAD now fully optimized for solid-phase disassembly…ready to replicate into vast swarms and chew away at the rock still connecting the Rift Valley to Africa…resettling millions of displaced people as refugees into camps and settlements handled by the UN Refugee Organization…the Mobility Obstruction Barrier design had been finalized and recent installation tests were successful…the first MOB units were already headed to east Africa…upgrades to Boundary Patrol and Sanctuary Patrol units and stations well underway…everything was coming together to begin accelerating the geoengineering efforts that would ultimately separate what the press was calling Kipwezia…the new continent…from Africa….
Kavaii relaxed somewhat and finally stopped fidgeting. He sipped at his drink and his face settled into a thousand-meter stare, staring at things only he could see.
“Gentlemen, I don’t have to remind you how controversial this Project Quarantine is. It’s political dynamite around here and anybody who touches it is likely to get his fingers blown off, myself included.”
UNSAC frowned. “I was told the Project already had the votes.”
The SG snorted. “A lot of African delegates are opposed. They don’t want to lose part or all of their territory. Can’t say I blame them. Who’s going to run Kipwezia? How will they be represented? Will it be one nation or twenty? Nobody has any answe
rs. The only thing that does matter is that we make sure Config Zero’s still inside the Sanctuary and that we can isolate him to Kipwezia, forever. Everything else is just politics…and arm-twisting. I’ve got the votes to ram the Project through. Just make sure Config Zero’s there when that island slides off into the sea.”
UNSAC explained further, “Sir, engineering the formation and detachment of Kipwezia will take years, probably decades. We’ve got bots optimized to chew through rock and lubricate tectonic plates, fissures and seams. The report says all that. But I have ordered that the MOBnet take priority over everything. Erecting the quarantine structure will have first draw on all resources. Deployment units are already in the area. Soon as we get word from Boundary Patrol about conditions below-ground and from Sanctuary Patrol about intel on Config Zero’s location, we can go to work.”
“It’s critical that the disentanglers work,” Winger added. “We can’t let Config Zero get signals in or out. We have to keep him isolated, fully immobilized in place. He’s a lot easier to deal with that way.”
UNSAC took a deep breath. “My biggest worry isn’t Kipwezia, Mr. Secretary. That’s just engineering, granted on a colossal scale. No, sir, my biggest worry is what I’m hearing from General Orlov. CINCSPACE just dropped some of Farside’s most recent observations of 51 Pegasi on me and it’s giving me indigestion.”
The SG looked perplexed. “I thought there had been no change in recent weeks.”
“The Delta P anomaly is still something like fifty light years away, but it’s moving on a course that will intercept us in a few decades, unless things change. Farside still officially thinks this is a dust cloud or possibly some kind of micro black hole, but no one has been able to explain how a dust cloud can make maneuvering changes. Unofficially, the thing has similar spectroscopic signatures to the Devils Eye anomaly Michelangelo ran into a few weeks ago. “
“Meaning what, exactly?”
UNSAC looked pained, trying to explain something that nobody had been able to explain yet. “Sir, the investigation into what happened to Big Mike is still going on. It appears from debris assessment and signature analysis that Hawley’s ship ran into some kind of swarm or cloud of bots…we don’t know that for sure but it fits what evidence we have. Until we get probes into the area, we won’t know for sure. Farside’s been tracking the anomaly they’ve called Devils Eye for some time now. It appears to be moving off deeper into space, toward the Oort Cloud, away from the Sun. That will make it a lot harder to track, out there among all the comets and iceballs and dirt clods orbiting at that distance. Maybe that’s the idea…we just don’t know. There’s observational evidence that something’s been happening around the Pluto system too…we just don’t know what it is yet.” UNSAC stopped for a breath, tried to put his feelings into words the SG would understand. “All I’m saying is that, taken together, all these facts make me uncomfortable. Something’s happening out there and we need to be on high alert.”
The SG glared directly from the screen, a hard edge to his face. “The Old Ones?”
“Too soon to say, sir. For years, Assimilationists like Symborg and others have been talking about the Old Ones. Some say they’re imaginary…a creation of some kind of hyperactive wish fulfillment…or a projection of our own emotional needs for a savior or a messiah. Even Symborg claims to be a messiah. And millions of people believe that. Is there any evidence for the Old Ones? Up until about a year ago, I would have said no. But now—“ UNSAC let the question hang in the air, unanswered.
“Well, I know one thing for sure,” the SG came back. “I’ve got a meeting in about five minutes, with delegates from the African Union…trying to explain why we’re splitting off a third of their continent. It won’t be pretty.” He signed off and the window on Winger’s wristpad went to a UN logo.
UNSAC and Winger were left. “I want you to leave the Symborg analysis to the engineers there, Winger. I need you back in Paris and I don’t want to hear any static about it. I need you here to oversee the Quarantine project.”
Winger knew better than to argue when Steiner had made up his mind. “I’ll be on the next hyperjet to Paris, sir. I guess I would like to see Dana again and be home…sometimes I’m not sure where home is.”
“I want you to set up a meeting with UNIFORCE Engineering on this MOBnet asap. Nobody’s ever done anything like this before. Whatever you geniuses come up, it has to work. We’ve got to keep this blasted Config Zero bottled up tight and deaf and dumb if we’re going to have any chance keeping our socks on.”
UNSAC signed off and within two hours, Winger was already aboard hyperjet Apollo, rocketing across the top of the stratosphere on the two hour suborbital hop to the spaceport in Paris.
There were only a few passengers aboard and Winger had most of the forward compartment to himself. He stared out at the cloudtops below, swirling in cyclonic fury with a late winter north Atlantic storm…the remnants of a nasty nor-easter that had swept up the U.S. east coast days before. The southern tip of Greenland was just visible in the darkening twilight sky.
Winger knew he needed to be with Dana, now more than ever. Somehow they had to come terms with the fact that Rene was lost to them again, for the second time. What would Dana want to do? There were a lot of options, all of them bad. They could contact Dr. Falkland, try to have a new Rene assembled, a sort of Rene 3.0. Winger didn’t think that was a good idea. Should there be a funeral…a memorial service? Liam was a grad student at Cambridge now, going for his masters in Physics. What would he think?
Winger felt a twinge of guilt about what had happened to the family. Atomgrabbers weren’t like normal people. They were all married to the Corps. The mission came first and family be damned. Now, they had managed to lose their daughter to Config Zero not once, but twice. Maybe it was time to leave the Corps, take retirement and spend his days gardening or skiing or woodworking, some sedate pastime that wasn’t so hard on the nerves, or the family.
The very thought of it brought a smile to Winger, not for the thought but for what Dana would say if the question were put to her. He could hear her now: “Wings, you’d be a miserable slob. Plus you know you don’t like gardening…the bots do that now. Face it, the Corps is our family. It’s in our blood…”
The jolt of hyperjet Apollo smacking the tarmac at the spaceport shook Winger out of what had been a disturbing half-dream. Images of Rene and Dana mixed in with images of Config Zero and the Keeper at Europa swirled in the back of his mind.
Get a hold of yourself, son. He hailed a jetcab and punched in the address for the Quartier-General. Once he arrived at UNIFORCE Headquarters, he figured he knew exactly he could find Colonel Dana Tallant…probably setting up some kind of briefing in the General Staff complex on the seventieth floor.
As the jetcab sped through night time Paris traffic and maneuvered its way through the narrow streets of the 5th Arrondisement toward the black slab that was UNIFORCE, he realized that he needed Dana more than ever now…she was something to hold onto, something real that hadn’t been deconstructed…yet. A single-config entity, as Doc II once liked to say.
Winger bounded into the front entrance and fidgeted impatiently, as Security ran the biometrics and scanned him in. He couldn’t wait to find a lift to the seventieth floor.
Solnet/Omnivision Video Post
@anna.kolchinova.solnetworldview
February 21, 2111
2200 hours U.T.
SOLNET Special Report:
Kipwezia: Earth’s Newest Continent?
Most readers and viewers of this newsvid are aware of our continuing series of investigations into the Quarantine Project and its on-going efforts to geoengineer a new continent by accelerating what Nature itself is doing along Africa’s Great Rift Zone.
For many months now, the U.N. Boundary Patrol has been conducting underground missions along tectonic plate boundaries around the world to preven
t Config Zero swarms from setting off artificial tremors and earthquakes. The toll in deaths, injuries and property damage from these tremors has been nearly incalculable.
However, in recent weeks, this reporter and other reporters with Solnet/Omnivision have learned of a project run by UNIFORCE to, essentially continue and even accelerate what Config Zero swarms have been doing.
The net result of this effort, it is hoped, will be to permanently sever part of east Africa from the rest of that continent, doing what Nature is already doing but on a vastly compressed time scale, and make a new island continent out of the result.
This new island continent has even been given an unofficial name: Kipwezia.
Sources within UNIFORCE have provided Solnet with new information regarding the details of this effort. One of the publically admitted goals of this project is to quarantine Config Zero on Kipwezia. Toward this end, Solnet can now report that efforts are underway to design and build a giant isolation shield that is to be erected over, under and around the entire island, permanently imprisoning Config Zero, it is hoped. Obviously, no structure of this type has ever been built before. Sources have indicated it is a variant of the Mobility Obstruction Barrier (MOB) device that Quantum Corps has been using for decades in its missions…a net to contain nanobotic systems and structures in a confined area.
Sources have also added that one of the unstated and more controversial goals proposed for the Project is to round up and incarcerate as many unlicensed angels and Assimilationists as possible on the island, for reasons of public safety and public health. This is said to be a logical outgrowth of the Public Safety Verification laws recently passed in many countries and at the UN.
It goes without saying that such an effort, if it proves to be true, would not only be highly illegal and practically speaking, nearly impossible to bring off, but also that such a resettlement program would have the profoundest effects on global society and future aspirations of diverse peoples and cultures around the world.
Solnet has not been able to confirm or refute these allegations as of yet. That such a program of building what amounts to concentration camps on a newly created land such as Kipwezia is even being contemplated disturbs many people and this reporter has gathered some of their comments to illustrate.
(Click here for Vidclip 10788.1… London cabbie denounces new plan to imprison Assimilationists….”…it’s a bit of a crock…’at’s what it is, if you’re askin’ me, luv. Them buggers are different, sure as I’m sittin’ ‘ere on Bond Street, but they don’t deserve no camp like ‘at…”)
The Quarantine Project is obviously a massive undertaking, the likes of which have never been attempted on Earth before. In addition to the MOBnet said to be under construction now at undisclosed locations under extremely tight UNIFORCE security, additional steps are required to ensure that Config Zero and possibly thousands of angels and Assimilationists remain confined on the island.
New devices called disentanglers have been developed and recently tested by Quantum Corps. These devices (Click here for vidclip 10920.7…Scrambling Quantum State Signals Now Possible, says Northgate University professor…) have the ability to detect and jam or interfere with quantum state signals in the vicinity of the device. According to sources at UNIFORCE, a network of disentanglers will be emplaced around Kipwezia to make sure that Config Zero cannot communicate with or direct any remote swarms, such as the ones setting off all the underground tremors. This kind of isolation is necessary, according to sources, to prevent enemy swarms from operating under central command. One UNIFORCE source described it this way:”
(Vidclip 11201: “…when we shot down Yamamoto in ’43, the Japs were like ants without a queen, all scurrying around in confusion…that made it easier to kick their asses all the way back to Tokyo.” )
The Quarantine Project has created an uproar in the General Assembly. Many African delegates are up in arms over losing so much of the continent’s territory to a new island. Specific objections have been raised to the way this Project was conceived and initiated, with little public debate and discussion.
Solnet/Omnivision recently interviewed Dr. Lamont Hill, Caltech geophysicist, about the Quarantine project.
SN/OV: Dr. Hill, thank you for taking the time to be with us today.
Hill: My pleasure, Anna.
SN/OV: Dr. Hill, you’ve said before that the project to separate east Africa at the Great Rift Valley and make a new island continent called Kipwezia will be the most massive engineering and construction effort ever undertaken and that it will takes decades. You’ve also said there are significant risks involved in making this happen. Could you explain?
Hill: Certainly. The basic problem is this…the east African Rift is actually a divergent plate boundary which extends from the Afar Triple Junction southward across eastern Africa and is in the process of splitting the African Plate into two new separate plates. Geologists generally refer to these incipient plates as the Nubian Plate and the Somali Plate. The plate boundaries are filled with hundreds of voids and strike-slip fault structures, not to mention a significant number of still active volcanoes and magma channels into the deeper mantle.
The plan to use vast swarms of nanobots to loosen the plates at their boundaries, chewing away rock and material at strategic locations so that natural plate motions will drive the plates apart is very risky. Tremendous forces are contained along these boundaries and, unless UNIFORCE is very careful, severe tremors and earthquakes are almost a certainty when these swarms operate.
SN/OV: So you’re saying, Dr. Hill, that additional quakes are almost inevitable?
Hill: That’s exactly what I’m saying. There’s almost no way to prevent them. We have imperfect knowledge of the fault structure underlying the Rift Zone and swarms cannot be every place at once. This process of severing east Africa along the plate boundary is like entering a gasoline storage tank with a lighted match to see where you’re going. You might get away with it but the odds aren’t good.
SN/OV: You’ve made these recommendations to UNIFORCE. What was their response?
Hill: Well, to be sure, UNIFORCE and Quantum Corps specifically have retained some very smart geologists to consult on this project. I’m sure many of them have made exactly the same recommendations that I have made.
SN/OV: Publically, UNIFORCE has minimized the threat of unexpected geologic activity such as quakes. Our sources indicate that Boundary Patrol missions to monitor plate movements and swarm operations will be increased, as a safety measure. Do you think this will be adequate to warn of stresses building up that could lead to quakes?
Hill: Well, it will certainly help. But once again, it’s a matter of resources. Even Boundary Patrol, with all its dedicated people and equipment and all the sensors and swarms in the world, can’t keep the entire rift zone under continuous surveillance. Tectonic plates move all the time. The Earth’s mantle and crust are living, dynamic systems. Some geologists believe UNIFORCE has enough resources to detect and contain any unexpected plate movements. I happen to disagree.
SN/OV: Dr. Hill, you know that UNIFORCE will be erecting a giant isolation shield over, around and under this new island of Kipwezia. Do you think such a shield will have positive, negative or no effects on the geology of the plate separation.
Hill: Anna, I think the best answer, the most truthful answer, is that we really don’t know. I’m a scientist. I deal in facts. The decision to go forward with this project seems to have been based on political and military/strategic objectives, with less attention paid to the underlying geology of the effort. My main point is this: we are taking grave risks using swarms to accelerate the rifting process that is already going on. There are many unknown factors. Unanticipated results are almost certain. Are we ready for that? That’s the big question.
SN/OV: Dr. Hill, thanks for taking the time to be with us today.
Hill: My pleasure.
SO
LNET Special Report Ends
UNIFORCE Headquarters
Quartier-General, Paris
February 22, 2111
2030 hours U.T.
The outside deck at the 72nd floor officers’ commissary was a small balcony overlooking the Boulevard Saint Michel and the Luxembourg Gardens. Night time Paris was spread out below them in bejeweled splendor, ribbons of light snaking off in every direction from the 5th Arrondisement. Jetcabs flitted by above and below, while on the horizon, the Eiffel Tower was bathed in radiant glory on a crisp late winter night.
Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant were not alone on the deck, as they soaked in the view before them, but the few officers still outside nursing their drinks and snacks gave them a respectful distance anyway, as much as the small patio would accommodate.
“When does the briefing start?” Winger asked. He stared down the ice cubes in his drink, speculating how long they would last.
Dana Tallant was staring at her drink as well. “You got the same notice as everybody else. 2200 hours on Briefing Deck A. All CinC’s are to be present.”
Winger stared out at a caravan of jetcabs circling the Eiffel Tower…tourists and charters, no doubt, snapping pictures from close up.
“It’s good to be home,” he said, after a long silence, as much to break the silence as anything.
Dana looked at him and smiled bravely. “I’m glad you’re back, too. I just wish—“ She looked away again, brushing back a lock of hair and in the same motion, a nascent tear at the corner of her eye.
“Me too,” Winger completed the thought. “Liam’s doing okay in school?”
Dana shrugged. “Pretty well. He’s still got his thesis to do…Cambridge has already given him a date…he was bouncing some ideas off me the other day.”
Winger swallowed hard. They were both tiptoeing around the subject of Rene, of what had become of the family. He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. Dana tried to smile again, but it wasn’t real.
“I did that to make sure you’re real. You can’t be too sure now—“
Dana held up her other hand and examined it. “Don’t, okay? Just…don’t. I’m having a hard enough time with this as it is. And the briefing’s coming up—“
Winger let go of her hand. “We have to talk about this, you know. You know what the psychs say…don’t keep feelings suppressed. They’ll come out one way or another. “
Dana started to get up, but thought better of it. “Well, I am real, Wings. I’m not going to disassemble right in front of you, if that’s what you mean. You don’t have to keep me in containment, like….” She bit off her words and slurped up some more of her drink. “I guess, with Liam at college, with Rene—“ she half-laughed, “—well, you know…it’s just you and me now.”
“I know one thing real for sure…I love you.”
Dana Tallant nodded. “Right. We’re talking about things that disappear, things that disassemble. Nothing’s real. Everything’s fabbed. And you bring up love. If I can’t be sure my own daughter is real, or my own husband is real, how can I say anything about love?”
“The same way as always…it has to be proven. I know one way to find out—“ he lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
Dana looked at him and nearly burst out laughing. She leaned over to plant a quick peck on his cheek. “After the briefing…your place or mine?”
That brought another laugh. “It’s the same place for both of us, girl.”
“Funny how that is.” Dana pulled out a compact and primped herself in its tiny mirror. “I guess the thing is we had Rene for seven years…seven good years. Now—“ she shrugged.
“We have memories,” Winger completed. “I know that doesn’t seem like enough, but I guess it’ll have to do. I just don’t want to lose you…or Liam. You’re my family now…you’re all I’ve got.”
“Don’t worry, Wings. I’m not going to deconstruct right in front of you, if that’s what you mean. I’m as real as this table—“ she knocked on the table top just as a gust of wind nearly overturned it, upending their drinks.
They both laughed a little nervously.
“When’s the briefing supposed to be over?” Winger asked.
Dana shrugged. “Depends on how many questions you CinC types have. UNSAC will be there. You know how warm and cuddly Steiner is at this hour.”
“I need reassurance that you’re real. Something I can touch and hold.”
“And cuddle with,” Dana added. “You got yourself a date, mister.”
They squeezed hands, then finished their drinks and headed downstairs to the Briefing Deck A.
EPILOGUE
SpaceGuard Center, Farside Observatory
Korolev Crater, the Moon
June 2111
0350 hours U.T.
Ernesto Bertelle and Adam Quint both sipped at their cups of hot tea at the same time, as they scanned the latest data from long-range surveillance of the 51 Pegasi system and its oddball Delta P anomaly. Both North and South Lateral Arrays had been slaved to the target coordinates for the better part of the night and neither astronomer bothered to hide the growing sense of unease that had come over them from reviewing the night’s data, data on something that nobody had ever really been able to explain.
“It’s on the move again,” said Quint. “Look at that Doppler signal…side lobe rate is consistent with velocity components both perpendicular and offset to us.”
“What about the other instruments…what are they saying?”
Quint scanned his board. “Submillimeter interferometer, VLF, radio, optical…it’s all consistent and ISAAC says all readings are outside normal error bands. Whatever it is, it’s as real as I am.”
Both men looked at each other for a long moment, knowing what they had to do. Neither wanted to do it. All Farside’s surveillance data was sobering enough as it was. The raw data could no longer be explained away as instrument glitch, processing error, crackpot theory or anything else.
Delta P was shifting position again and the trajectory changes could not be accounted for by any known forces: gravitational, magnetic or quantum effects.
“Maybe it’s a resonance effect,” Bertelle suggested. “You know...somehow gravity and tidal interaction pumping the orbit of Delta P enough to make it look like this…like some kind of weird course change. That happens.”
Quint shook his head. “You don’t believe that and neither do I. Ernesto, we have to face facts. The facts are right in front of us.”
“Crittendon’s not going to like this. Or the Committee.”
“I have a feeling the Universe doesn’t give a crap what Crittendon thinks. Start recording. And triple check everything. I don’t want Crit or anyone saying we messed up the readings ‘cause we overlooked some setting or something.”
“What about the Pluto anomaly?”
“Put that in the report too. It may be related.”
“All of it?”
“Every damn last word and reading: optical brightening, absorption line shifts, orbit perturbation, energy spikes in multiple EM bands…even the fact that no observatory can confirm the friggin’ planet exists anymore…cram it all in there. Maybe Crittendon and the Committee will open their eyes now.”
Bertelle and Quint knew what they had to do. They had been tracking both anomalies for the better part of three duty cycles. Standard procedure called for a formal notice to be issued to UNISPACE. A ‘three-line’ notice, it was called, with updated orbital elements, updated ephemeris, the works.
The micro black hole or whatever the hell Delta P was, was changing course, maneuvering was the word Bertelle chose not to use, since that implied intelligence that couldn’t be confirmed by evidence. The course change had put Delta P on a trajectory that, if unchanged, would bring the anomaly into intercept with our own solar system in about four decades. Which of course, implied that the phenomenon was traveling at approx
imately 99% light speed. Which of course, was essentially impossible.
Except all the instruments said it wasn’t.
Instrument error, dark matter effects, quantum displacement, the Old Ones are coming, Jesus is coming…Bertelle had heard every possible explanation.
“I’m going to the canteen,” the astronomer announced. “Some coffee and a few dozen doughnuts sounds about right. This is going to take a while.”
Quint was massaging his keyboard. “I’ll pull up the SpaceGuard Advisory template and get started.”
Bertelle left the room and prowled the circular corridors of Farside’s Newton Wing until he came to the tunnel leading to Kepler Wing and the canteen. Ten minutes’ walk and he was sitting on a barstool next to a hand-lettered ‘Fiji Islands Lagoon’ sign. He watched as Caesar, the robo-tender, poured a steaming cup and fixed him a mixed plate of jelly-filled and glazed.
Caesar’s face was done up to look something like a cross between Captain Kangaroo from 20th century American TV and a Pacific Islander tribal chief, even down to the ‘bone’ through its nose and incongruous white moustache.
“Pardon me, Dr. Bertelle but you look a little—“ the tender tried something like a shrug, but the whirring servos kind of destroyed the illusion.
“It’s called fatigue, Caesar, that’s all. Maybe a little uneasiness. We’ve got something we can’t really explain out there and we’ve got to issue a formal advisory to UNISPACE. A lot of questions will be asked. We don’t have answers for most of them.”
Caesar seemed to consider that as it wiped mindlessly at the countertop with a rag. “Some people can’t handle the truth, Dr. Bertelle.”
“Bureaucracies too, Caesar. Anything outside the norm is a problem. People don’t want to hear it or consider it. When everything known to be possible has been considered and rejected, then the impossible must be the answer…somebody said that once, I’m sure.”
Bertelle continued chatting with Caesar but his mind was racing a million miles an hour. He and Quint and the other astros and techs staffing the Watch Center had tried for two days to come up with any alternative explanation that even remotely fit the facts: not enough data, instrument error, unknown forces acting on Delta P, black holes, dark matter, white rabbits…but the reality of what they were observing just wouldn’t go away.
By the end of the shift, reluctantly and with standard formalities and caveats, Ernesto Bertelle and Adam Quint put together a formal SpaceGuard Advisory Notice, with all its supporting data, links and appendices. They both knew full well that a threat confirmation meeting would soon be called. And the likely result of that was a full Threatcon issued to all UNISPACE and UNIFORCE units and commands.
Bertelle could almost feel the sharp edge of the guillotine on the back of his neck.
Both men had a foreboding sense of what was to come out of this meeting and Threatcon. Whatever you thought about the Old Ones, there was no denying that something was happening at or around 51 Pegasi, a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of spectral class G4, situated in the center the constellation Pegasus, the Winged Horse. And somehow the Delta P anomaly, whatever the hell it was, was associated with them.
Bertelle slurped down the last of his coffee and polished off his fourth doughnut. “See you, Caesar…got to get back to the factory.”
The robo-tender raised a hand to wave, servos whirring as it did so. “Have a pleasant day, Dr. Bertelle.”
Unknown to both of them, some fifty light-years away from Farside’s Fiji Island Lagoon and Bar, the Mother Swarm executed yet another correction maneuver and swung its half-light-year wide girth around to settle onto a new course, a course that would eventually bring the massive swarm into a direct collision with the solar system in forty-four years’ time.
About the Author
Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses…just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for over 20 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.
For more details on his series Tales of the Quantum Corps, visit his blog at qcorpstimes.blogspot.com.
Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone Page 52
