by J. Benjamin
“Speak for yourself!” Kiara said. “I love dried ice cream! Even if the space-bound don’t actually eat it.”
“People in space eat normal food. The problem with Luna isn’t whether or not the food is dry or wet. It’s that it’s so far away that you don’t have as much access to the fresh ingredients that you’d find on Earth. Limited options, and you can expect to pay at least three times what you would pay for something grown on Earth.”
“Alrighty. Avoid spending life savings on Luna vacation. Noted,” Kiara quipped.
“You’re welcome,” Matt said.
“Whatever,” Kiara said while rolling her eyes. She turned to listen to the jazz band. She recognized the melody of the up-tempo piano, bass harmony, and constant beat of the cymbals. It was “Close Your Eyes” by Oscar Peterson.
“So back to your original question,” Leon said to Matt. “My job is more about opening new labs, funding programs, traveling to sites to meet with researches after they’ve had a big break, and advising the secretary-general on how to proceed. She has the unfortunate job of trying to sell the general assembly on her policies. Thank God I’m not the one doing it because you saw what happened there. And really, it’s the deputies such as Kiara who get to see the real fun stuff.”
“Oh?” Matt said.
“Uh, what?” Kiara asked, turning away from the jazz and back to the conversation.
“Leon says you have a better job than he does,” Matt quipped.
“Depends on what your definition of interesting is,” Kiara said. Before she could continue, she noticed Leon moving his hands in front of his face, as if he were answering a call.
“Yes…” Leon replied while looking straight forward to talk to an invisible person on his smart lens. “Oh my. Okay. I’m coming now.” He ended the message and turned to Kiara and Matt. “That’s my husband. He’s mad because I told him I am traveling tomorrow and he wants to see me before we leave. Sent a drone to pick me up. It’s on the roof deck.”
“See you at Heather Zel Station at oh-nine-hundred,” Matt said.
“I live two blocks from the station. Will be there right on time,” Leon said. He got up, nodded to Kiara and Matt, and dashed out of the restaurant.
“That was sudden,” Kiara said.
“I imagine with his workaholic lifestyle, he probably doesn’t see his family as much as he wants to,” Matt said.
“Indeed,” Kiara said.
“So, back to you,” Matt said. “I want to hear more about what it’s like being a deputy exobiologist.”
“It’s like being any other biologist except my focus is on entirely different kingdoms of taxonomy,” Kiara said. “The life on Europa, much like the life on Enceladus and Earth, has its own unique cell structure. My job is to understand the building blocks of Europa’s life down to the molecular level. How did it evolve into the magnificent biodiversity we see on a dark, subsurface ocean like Europa?”
“I always find it interesting that a Jovian moon with barely an atmosphere and miles-thick ice blocking the sun could be so full of life,” Matt said.
“It’s not so crazy when you think about it,” Kiara said. “Europa has an oxygen-rich ocean and has three to four times the volume of all the water on Earth. Then consider that it’s covered with active hydrothermal vents constantly being tugged at by the gravity of Jupiter. Then you have the ice that is trapping everything inside and mostly-uninterrupted evolution taking place over billions of years.”
“I guess when you put it that way, that does make a lot of sense,” Matt said. “Question though, what’s the deal with the kaijudon? Why are they so difficult to get on camera?”
“Ha,” Kiara replied. “Those things are something, aren’t they? For sea creatures twice the size of a blue whale, they sure move swiftly. Their compound eyes let them see in all directions, but they’re also sensitive to light. Send a Poseidon V too close, and they dash away faster than a hyperloop. Besides, they give off more than enough body heat to study from X-ray scans. No need to scare them off with a drone lantern in their face.”
“That’s nuts,” Matt said. “I am impressed by what you biologists managed to get on them so far. Cheers to the kaijudon.” They clinked their glasses once again.
They turned to listen to the band. The brass instruments blared louder this time. An older gentleman walked up to the stage. However, as he started singing, “I’ve Got the World On A String” by Frank Sinatra, his voice sounded thirty years younger.
I’ve got the world on a string, sitting on a rainbow, got the string around my finger. What a world, what a life, I’m in love! This continued for a few minutes. It ended with thunderous applause.
Kiara and Matt stood up to join the chorus of clapping. After several more numbers, they were ready to call it a night.
8
Space Station Sagan
It was another restless night for Isla Perez. They were becoming more frequent, and after the events of the previous day, she anticipated they wouldn’t be going away anytime soon.
The admiral sat in her office, a discrete twelve by twelve room on Deck 40. Behind her was a window view and before her, translucent graphene panels separating her from the outside hallway. Various feeds traversed the walls. On one side was the news. On another, it was an updated visual map of Kennedy.
Isla buried her attention into the virtual pages of the first report. That white and blue planet five lightyears away was going to have monumental impacts on the GSF and its future. This was not lost on Isla. Her reflection quickly shattered as a bright red alert flickered in the upper-left hand of her smart lens. It was followed by an alarm sound.
“What in the ten levels of hell?” Isla said, knowing that when the alarm went off, it was never for anything celebratory. Before she had a chance to acknowledge the emergency call, a loud clattering of footsteps hurried toward her office. The door to her office burst open. Captain Cade Starling and two other officers rushed in.
“Admiral,” Captain Starling said. Isla sprung up from her desk. “There’s been an incident at our embassy in Johannesburg. A bombing. Twenty dead, and that’s expected to rise.”
“Assemble the Joint Chiefs,” Isla said.
“Already done,” Cade responded. “They’re waiting for you in the Sit. The secretary-general and defense secretary have also been alerted.”
Isla followed Cade out of her office and down the hall. They approached the Sagan situation room, otherwise known as ‘the Sit.’ It was a cylindrical operations center meant to function as an orbital equivalent to the situation room at the GSF headquarters in Sally Ride City. The highest-ranking military officials on the Sagan were already present when Isla entered. The room turned to Isla and stood at attention.
“At ease,” she said. “I want a full report.”
Gwen Jackson, the station’s commander, proceeded to speak.
“Admiral, at approximately ten-hundred hours an explosion ripped through the heart of the GSF embassy in Johannesburg,” she said. “Two dozen victims are now reported dead, and the death toll is expected to climb. So far nobody has claimed responsibility, but drone scans show high concentrations of the bioweapon daemonide. Presently, there are only two groups known to possess the chemical agent. The Global Space Federation and—”
“Terra Rebirth,” Isla interrupted.
“Correct,” Commander Jackson said. “There’s no doubt this was a Terra Rebirth suicide attack and likely ordered by Manuel Carter himself. It’s entirely consistent with their previous two strikes.”
“How did we miss this one?” Isla asked.
“Daemonide is a highly sensitive nano-material,” Cade said. “It needs to be kept in a warm liquid state before it goes reactive and unstable. At ninety-eight point six degrees, the human body is a perfect incubator for the weapon.”
“Yes, but it’s still a death sentence,” Gwen replied. “Once somebody injects themselves with it, they have days to live before their bloodstream can no longer hold b
ack the reactive effects. Not to mention, it’s easy to trigger the reaction through a pill or incendiary device. Most scanners have no issue detecting daemonide once it becomes reactive or leaves the bloodstream. But as long as it’s dormant within the host, it’s near impossible to find. Intelligence wanted it that way when they constructed the weapon.”
“Intelligence never anticipated the August 5th heist at our Dubai research facility,” Isla said. “The bioweapon is out there, and until we apprehend Carter’s financiers and co-conspirators, we are going to have a tough time tracking that weapon.”
“So, what are our orders?” Cade asked.
“I want GSF Earth Forces to prioritize helping as many survivors as possible,” Isla replied. “That’s priority one. Second, I want to recommend that the Special Protection Group double the number of agents they have on the secretary-general and Cabinet ministers. Third, I want the full-body scanners to be installed at a faster pace in all our facilities.”
“Admiral, may I speak freely?” Commander Jackson asked.
“Granted,” Isla said.
“Those scanners haven’t been fully tested. Will they be effective?”
“Don’t know,” Isla said. “What I do know is that they have a fifty percent higher detection rate of finding daemonide within a host than the current technology we have. That moves the needle further in the direction of our being able to detect terrorists before they strike. For now, we stick with that until we have better options.”
“Acknowledged,” Gwen said.
As they spoke, two holograms projected down into the two empty seats at the table. Everyone stood at attention. A hologram of Secretary Adler beamed to life, and it was shortly followed by a hologram of the secretary-general.
“Admiral,” Katelyn Lew prompted. “What happened?”
“Manuel Carter,” Isla said.
9
Guion Bluford GSF Spaceport - (186 miles outside Fairbanks, Alaska, Russian Federation)
To the passing observer, the Guion Bluford GSF Spaceport base would be an afterthought. To some, it was the subject of endless conspiracy theories comparable to Area 51. Unbeknownst to the conspiracy theorists, Guion Bluford Spaceport was nothing of the sort. There were no alien cadavers nor rusting flying saucers hidden in an underground warehouse.
Instead, it was a sprawling facility smack dab in the middle of the tundra. The central building was a vast, cylindrical complex with the purpose of manufacturing space vehicles within minutes. From there, the rockets would roll onto the tarmac and promptly launch into the atmosphere. The spacecraft-construction complex stood out as the largest building on the base.
Feeding into the central building were several metal arteries that led to mostly unassuming buildings. They included barracks, mess halls, training facilities, a spaceflight command center, and one research facility which stood out from the rest of the campus.
The research building was the second-largest building on the base, and it was rather imposing in its own right. It was a black paperweight of a building with a metal ridge pattern casing along the outside and a solid layer of graphene beneath. One could see out from within, but nobody could see in from outside. The research building was large enough to be a small stadium. Its interior consisted of twelve stories of medical testing facilities.
Deep inside the research center, three jet-lagged gammanauts sat at a metal table with the chief administrator of the Department of Dream-Sequence Research, Dr. Gurmeet Srivastava. He held a holographic writing pad in his hands.
“Pleasure to be working with the three of you,” the youthful doctor said. “I know you’re all tired. You likely have a lot of questions. The first is how in the world did you go from a fancy gala in the Bay Area to a stuffy research facility in the middle of nowhere in less than twenty-four hours?” Kiara, Matt, and Leon laughed.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Dr. Srivastava said. “To answer any questions you have. Whether it’s about spacetime sequencing, the mission, your training. You probably know a bit about the science behind all of this, but I can help answer deeper questions you have about that. My goal is to help you be as prepared as possible for what’s to come. I am your personal advocate.”
“I have a question, Dr. Srivastava.” Kiara said.
“Dr. Lacroix. Ask away.”
“I am still wrapping my head around some of the specifics of spacetime sequencing. Secretary Adler gave us a high-level explanation, but I would appreciate it if you would break it down to the details. You have two scientists present, but our focuses aren’t in quantum physics,” Kiara said.
“Good question,” Dr. Srivastava said. “What is spacetime sequencing? What is this mysterious and new technology we’re engaging in? Take the Einstein–Rosen Bridge. For the better part of two centuries, it was just a theory. That was before Intelligence decided to make proving its existence a priority. We had decades’ worth of research. With the help of our AI team on the Sagan, things quickly took off.”
“On deck fifty-five?” Kiara asked.
“Correct. Now take that research. Consider the fact that the laser weapons onboard the Sagan are the most powerful ever built. After a contentious debate between Cabinet and military leadership, the Sagan was given the go-ahead to convene a series of experiments. They involved concentrating its weapons in such a way that they would create a stable rift in spacetime itself. You can imagine that the first experiments failed spectacularly.
“The first attempt completely fried the Sagan’s defense weapons. The repairs took six months. We were so close to seeing the entire program scrapped. However, things improved spectacularly after four more attempts. By the fifth attempt, Sagan detected a gravitational anomaly in the target of the lasers. We knew we were making progress.”
“When did you know that you had actually succeeded?” Leon asked.
“How long does it take a message to reach Pluto and for Pluto to respond back?” Dr. Srivastava asked.
“Ten point six hours total,” Kiara said. “Five hours and twenty minutes to send and another five hours and twenty minutes for the response to reach Earth.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Srivastava replied. “On the seventh experiment, we decided we were going to do just that. We would send a message to Pluto and wait for the reply back. In November twenty-seventy-nine, the Sagan created another gravitational anomaly. This time, SaganAI set the energy levels and coordinates of the gravity field to target Pluto’s space. The field lasted ten nanoseconds, but in that micro-window, the Sagan successfully transmitted a series of radio signals through it. The signals contained an encrypted message for the Mickey probe, in Lagrange lock between Pluto and Charon. Whenever the Mickey probe receives direct messages, it’s required to send an encrypted callback to the Sagan with the timestamp marking when it was received. The same radio signals fired through the gravity field were submitted independent of it.”
“So, what happened?” Matt asked.
“Five hours after the experiment, a message came back from the Mickey probe. It was marked with a timestamp matching noon pacific standard on June nineteenth, twenty-seventy-four. That was the moment the experiment was initialized. The callback came five hours later. For the first time in the history of the human race, we had created the first successful spacetime bridge.”
“Damn!” Kiara said.
It only lasted ten nanoseconds, but it worked.”
“Unbelievable,” Leon said. “That GSF has had this for two years and managed to keep it a secret is impressive.”
“Right? Even on the Sagan with its population of two thousand, nobody onboard knew about the wormholes except authorized personnel,” Dr. Srivastava said. “Intelligence does excellent work when it comes to keeping their applied technologies under wraps.”
“So, how are we going to apply this to the mission at hand?” Kiara asked.
“Glad you asked,” Dr. Srivastava said. He unveiled a pen to holo-write in the air above the pad and drew two small circles wit
h five inches of space separating them. “On the left, you have Earth. On the right, Kennedy. Between these two planets, you have five lightyears. That means it will take five years to send a message and five more years to wait for a reply. Not very efficient, right? We got the Pelicans, and no doubt, we will be learning much more from them in the months to come, but what if we want to communicate directly? Well, now we have a better way.”
He drew an asterisk next to Earth and another asterisk next to Kennedy.
“With spacetime sequencing, we are going to do what we did with the Mickey probe. Except this time the wormhole will be stable, and the communications will involve beaming the consciousness of human minds, yours,” Gurmeet said. “All three of you will be unconscious, and your minds will be in a dream world of our creating. Now, this is very important. There’s a lot we can learn from the Pelicans, but if we want to have a sincere first contact with this new species, we need a human presence.”
“And how can we be certain the beings on Kennedy will even notice our little virtual world? The dream net is barely a generation-old technology. How sure are we that these unknowns have as much as a telegram, let alone the technology to recognize our most advanced mind-reading capabilities?” Matt asked.
“Naturally, the virtual dream environment won’t be the only form of communication we pass into the spacetime sequence,” Dr. Srivastava explained. “There will be fifty thousand different signals fired through the wormhole before the landing environment has even been initialized. All of which will happen in the blink of an eye. If the unknowns have a different form of communication technology, we are going to make every effort to link with it. That communication will be routed into the virtual world where you will be. If it’s anything as simple as a radio wave or audio transmission, you will get it. If it is advanced on the level of the dream net, you will also get it.”
“And what if they don’t pick up? Then what?” Kiara asked.
