New Tales from Hilbert Space

by Gabriel Just

this is one of the details we should look into before we can build it.”

  “I see. Maybe you can show me a blueprint? Do you have one?”

  “Of course I have one!” Tinwin pointed at his head. “In here. Fetch me a pencil and I will draw a detailed schematic for you.”

  Melira picked up a pencil from the table and thought it needed sharpening. She pushed a button on the Transsteel saw and the machine sprung to life with a dreadful roar. Wearing safety gloves she carefully inserted the pencil into the machine and within seconds the writing instrument was completely pulverized.

  “Sorry,” Melira apologized. “It takes a few tries until the pencil survives the process.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tinwin said cheerfully. “These things happen to me all the time. The important thing is progress, you should not cry over a lost pencil or test subject. But to speed things up, just give me a blunt pencil.”

  Tinwin drew on a sheet of paper while mumbling, “It will not be 100 percent accurate, but maybe 98 percent. I only saw the device for a couple of minutes, but thanks to my nearly eidetic memory I can reconstruct it in great detail.”

  After a few minutes Tinwin proudly showed his drawing.

  Melira looked at it. “That is just a square,” she determined. “And an arrow pointing inwards, labeled ‘Energy’. And a second one, pointing outwards, labeled ‘No Energy’. Is this really all you remember?”

  “The rest are just details. Kobb does most of the drawings for my publications. I am bored by such easy tasks.”

  “I am not sure,” Kobb said, “but I think the Tinwin sink didn’t even look like this. I saw it only once, but I distinctly remember it was more elliptical. Give me the paper!”

  Kobb erased the square and added an elliptical figure. “More like this,” he mumbled while drawing. “And there was a big drain in the middle. And a kind of vortex at the end of it. And a small chamber here and two… no, three pipes on the other side.”

  Kobb continued drawing until he finished a detailed blueprint of the Tinwin sink.

  “Impressive,” Melira said in wonder.

  “Well done, Kobb,” Tinwin praised his assistant. “Of course I laid the groundwork for this masterpiece. All you did was draw fancy, unimportant decoration. But nevertheless, you did a good job.”

  Melira took a look at the schematic. “I think I know how it works. The vortex at the bottom must be some kind of wormhole that attracts energy. Maybe the chamber stores something. Something to power the wormhole or keep it stable. But what do the pipes do? Three pipes. Maybe for the three spacial dimensions? Or the three color charges? Or maybe two are just as backup?”

  “I think they have a purely aesthetic purpose.” Tinwin hypothesized. “We should waste no time trying to determine their function. All we need to do is built this thing, not understand it. In fact we only need to construct a smaller version, we don’t want all the energy to vanish. Just a tiny bit.”

  “But how should we generate a stable wormhole?” Melira asked. “And how can we attract energy, but not matter. I think this machine was very sophisticated.”

  “Thats true,” Tinwin admitted. “But ours doesn’t have to be. The Tinwin sink was designed to siphon the energy out of everything. Electrons, photons, even positrons. An it did that without harming matter in the vicinity. Well, not on purpose at least. But our machine can be much simpler. We don’t want to use it on a planet, we just throw it at the central star. We don’t even have to care about what it sucks in. Matter, photons, everything would help to cool the planet down.”

  “That actually sounds reasonable.” Melira smiled.

  “That actually sounds dangerous,” Kobb protested. “We can not simply build a machine without knowing what it does and then use it on a star, hoping for the best.”

  “You are right,” Tinwin agreed. “Our first priority should be to find out if that machine would work. So I suggest we pay close attention to what happens, once we built it and threw it at the sun.”

  The Mini Tinwin sink, as Tinwin liked to call it, was beautiful in its own way. After hours of working with Transsteel tools that were far too heavy to use them efficiently it was finally finished. It was smaller than Tinwin’s palm but due to the excessive use of Transsteel it was too massy to be lifted by a single person. Tinwin decided to focus on the essentials and they scrapped all the parts that had no obvious function like the chamber or the pipes. The Melira sink, as Melira liked to call it, was more or less a drain pipe with an attached wormhole and a switch that turned the wormhole on and off.

  “Should we try switching it on?” Melira suggested.

  “That is far too dangerous,” Tinwin explained. “I wouldn’t even let Kobb do it. Once activated this wormhole will continuously suck in matter. Trust me, it will work. I did this lots of times. In simulations at least. If my calculations are correct, and Kobb can assure you that my calculations always are, it will siphon precisely enough energy to counteract the warming effect. By the way, are there any other inhabited planets in this system?”

  “I don’t think so,” Melira replied.

  “Good. That saves us the trouble of finding a way to artificially heat those. We should get going. Do you have a shuttle we could use, Melira? Ours is sturdy but not exactly fit for maneuvering close to stars. You see, Kobb is not exactly an exceptionally gifted pilot.”

  “It is not my fault that the university only trusts you with the oldest junk they can find,” Kobb yelled.

  Before the argument escalated, Melira offered her assistance. “Of course we can use my shuttle. It is quite fast and very heat resistant. We should be able to get very close to the sun. I parked it behind my lab, lets go.”

  While Melira and Kobb carried the energy sink, Tinwin supervised them. As they reached Melira’s shuttle, Tinwin had to find out that it was in a terrible condition. The hull was full of crudely patched breaches and the paint was long gone, revealing a coarse Transsteel hull.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it? I did all the upgrades myself,” Melira boasted.

  “Are you sure it flies?” Kobb asked. “It looks quite heavy.”

  “It is,” Melira agreed. “Under normal circumstances it would not be able to ascend. Fortunately it is equipped with a mass inverter.”

  “You use the mass inverter for takeoff? That is insane!”

  “It is very common on Kemos 8. Most of our ships are made from Transsteel, so they withstand this manoeuvre. The ground… not so much. You might have noticed the high crater density on this planet. Looks nice, doesn’t it? Makes the planet look more exciting.”

  The three boarded the shuttle and stored the energy sink in the back.

  “Buckle up, the start might get a little bit bumpy.” Melira waited until everybody was strapped in and then activated the mass inverter. It generated a spherical field in which the sign of all masses was reversed. With a loud cracking noise the ship and a small portion of the ground, trapped in the mass inversion field, felt the now repelling gravitational force of the planet and were pushed away with great speed. Since it was a gravitational effect they were technically falling but this was a detail Kobb did not care much about, since his seatbelt did not close properly and he was propelled against a particularly hard Transsteel wall.

  “Sorry everyone,” Melira apologized. “I promise you that the ride will get smoother from now on. Unless we encounter big masses of course.”

  “Like stars?” Kobb asked while stumbling back to his seat.

  “You are right, we might need to get very close. Fortunately the mass inverter has an alternating setting. That should help keep us stable once we are close to the sun. At least on average.”

  While they were flying closer and closer to the central star of the Kemos system, Kobb wondered what ‘stable on average’ exactly meant and Tinwin found a way to remotely trigger the energy sink with his Widget. That was a far safer method than his previous plan of letting Kobb do it.

  “With the mass inverter active we can’t ge
t any closer,” Melira explained. “Should I turn it off?”

  “I don’t think we have a choice,” Tinwin said. “It won’t work from here. Bring us in closer. But be careful, we don’t want to get too close.”

  Melira turned a switch and suddenly the shuttle was attracted to the sun which made coming closer much easier. Too easy even. After a few moments of free fall it suddenly got very hot inside the shuttle.

  “I think we are close enough now,” Tinwin asserted. “Keep this distance!”

  “Switching to alternating mass inversion,” Melira announced while turning the switch once more. The shuttle now changed the sign of its mass every few moments and every time it did, it went from being pulled towards the star to being pushed away or vice versa. While this kept them at a constant distance on average, Kobb found out that this was something entirely different than being stationary.

  “This shuttle has a torpedo tube for launching probes. We can use it to fire the energy sink,” Melira suggested. “Kobb, help me load it!”

  Together they carried the sink to the loading chamber while Tinwin got ready to activate it remotely. They launched the sink and once it was at a safe distance from the ship, Tinwin activated it with his Widget.

  “I think it worked,” Tinwin exclaimed. “At least it glows. That must be a good sign. We really produced a stable wormhole. Well, a wormhole at the very least. This should do the trick.”

  “One question,