Up until this summons, at least. What could this be about? She only wished she'd done something unconventional enough to warrant a reprimand. But, she knew she hadn't. Sachiko was a good girl.
“Good morning. I have a 10:00 appointment with Dean Greyson,” She said formally to the receptionist.
“I believe she sent for you, Ms. Jones. But either way, yes. Please be seated. I'll let her know you're here. The other party has yet to arrive.”
Other party? WTF? Who else was involved? This was sounding worse and worse. Did she need a lawyer?
Stop it, she chided herself. Stop making funeral arrangements before she even knew if she had a fatal condition. Sachiko pulled out her iPhone and checked on things. It would take her mind off—whatever.
“Dean Greyson is ready now,” said the diminutive prune behind the counter. “I'll show you in.”
Great, because Sachiko couldn't possibly figure out how to get through that big door all by herself. There might be lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my.
“Ms. Jones,” the secretary announced like they'd entered the queen's court.
“Have her sit over there,” the dean pointed to a wooden chair.
Greyson pretended to busy herself with paperwork for just long enough to signal that she was, in fact, pissing on Sachiko.
“Ms. Jones, I trust you know Dr. Sherman,” she gestured toward him like she needed orientation. A) he was a close, personal friend; and B) he was the only other person in the room. Unless she was introducing Sachiko to the drapes, she didn't think Alice needed to point.
“You mean Tank? Yeah, I've worked with him for nearly three years now. Some of my equipment is housed in his Mars Base 1.”
Alice puckered up her face real matronly and corrected her. “His equipment is stationed on his installation. He allows you to use it, Ms. Jones.”
Tank sat forward, like he was going to say something, but then leaned back in silence.
“For the purposes of today's informal intervention, I feel Dr. Sherman is how we shall refer to him.” She tapped a small recording device with her pen.
Informal intervention? Not good. Not only that, it was oxymoronic. Military intelligence, jumbo shrimp, or a good boss. Interventions were universally bad; usually the moderator needed a colonoscope to perform the intervention with. Formal meant an academic star chamber was next, with Sachiko's head on a pole, flies buzzing in one ear and out the other. What was the dean on about?
“Up until now, Ms. Jones, you've enjoyed free communications with Dr. Sherman's team on Mars 1.”
“Was that a question? If it was, then, yes. We exchange information fairly regularly.”
“We are here today to discuss your abuse of those precious and costly communications links.”
“Abuse? You're probably not kidding, but I really hope you are.”
“I never kid,” she replied flatly.
To see Alice, any day of her life, was to know she had just spoken truth. That had also been her experience, so Sachiko believed her.
“Can I ask what it is I'm accused of doing?”
“That will not be necessary.” She slid a set of papers stapled together across the table to her.
It was then she noted Tank had a copy, already. Action Intervention was the title. Sachiko nearly crapped herself. That was what the warden handed the condemned prisoner before sending them to the electric chair.
“As part of our intervention, we'd like to formally enter into your permanent record that you willfully abused the communications system. It is our hope that this intervention will help you to not repeat such a heinous act in the future.”
“Whoa, please. Who's we and when do I get a shot at defending myself?”
“We are here to discuss your intervention instructive plan, not to hear your defense. That time is in the past.”
“How can it be past when—”
Tank cleared his throat very loud, as in shut up, Sachiko.
“I think now would be a good time to play the recording for Ms. Jones, Dean Greyson. It might smooth over her apparent reservations.”
He smiled at Sachiko in a constipated manner. Whatever was up, he was not happy to be a part of it.
“I was hoping to avoid any didactics, but, as Ms. Jones is making such a fuss, I'm going to allow it, against my wishes. As you are the injured party in this instance, please go ahead,” instructed the dean.
“Thank you. Sa … Ms. Jones. Ted up on Mars 1 received this message from you a week ago. Do you recall speaking with him then?”
“No. I mean I didn't. He sent me an off the wall practical joke call, but I ignored it and didn't respond.”
“Do you plan on maintaining that counterproductive contention?” said Alice like a cheap lawyer in court.
“Am I under oath and forgot about it?” Sachiko knew. Not the time to snark. But, she was thinking she was a dead woman walking, so, what the hell?
Again Tank cleared his throat. He really didn't want her to engage the bitch. Sachiko figured she'd best take his advice, him being her only friend in sight.
“I do not recall speaking to Mars 1 last week. It's been, oh, three weeks since I called Mars. That time I spoke with Lucinda, not Ted.”
“Play the tape please,” she requested.
“Here goes.”
Tank, make sure you're recording everything. Focus all your instruments on the supermassive black hole at the center of the Andromeda galaxy. I know you can't get the massive gamma burst, but please make sure you get these gravity waves. They're the biggest I've ever seen. Confirm receipt please.
“That's not me speaking, “Sachiko said rising from her chair.
“It most certainly is,” seethed Greyson. “Please don't make this significantly worse by lying, child.”
She hadn't lied about anything in her life, ever. Not even as a kid to her mom if she did something naughty.
“It sure sounds like you, kiddo.” Tank often called her that. Kiddo. She kind of hated it, but she knew he meant it in a goodly manner.
“Why would I say that? Huh? It's crazy talk.”
“I haven't been on Mars for a couple years now,” said Tank. “Maybe you meant to say Ted, right? It's an easy enough mistake to make, if you ask me.”
“But, why would I say that pile of crap to you, or Ted, or the man in the moon?” Sachiko whined.
“Watch your language, Ms. Jones. You're in enough trouble already,” swatted the old witch.
“Is this Through the Looking Glass, people?” she responded. “I wouldn't ask Ted or Tank to record gravity waves that weren't there, from a structure that didn't exist.”
“I very much resent your choice of analogies,” spat the dean.
Oh yeah, Lewis Carroll wrote Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, didn't he? Her bad. Was every Alice on Earth insulted by that old fairy tale?
“Now, Dean Greyson, let's keep cool heads, shall we?” asked Tank.
“This young woman is testing my indulgence farther than I think I should bear. For her sake, I feel I must incentivize her more energetically with each treacherous word that leaves her foul mouth.”
“Alice, lighten up. You were a hot headed kid once, yourself. We both know it. I attended MIT right along side you.” He snickered to himself, quietly. “Need I remind you who the members of the Quadrangle Twins were?”
The dean flushed like there was a fire under her chair. Sachiko actually wished there was. It'd serve her right.
“That we've been friends for years doesn't change the fact that this young woman—”
“Wants you to lighten up, too.” Sachiko snapped. Wise? Unwise? She'd have to ponder that during quieter times.
“Look. We … I mean, I'm just not clear why you'd send this message, knowing it was going to be recorded? I like a good joke as well as the next guy. That said, kiddo, do you hear your tone? You sound deadly serious. Excited, in fact. I got concerned and brought the issue up to Alice.”
The circle i
s completed. Thanks. Et tu, Tank? You could'a come straight to me, but no.
“I for one do not wish to know why you pulled this prank, Ms. Jones. I simply wish to help guide you into not making that poor choice again.”
Why didn't she just say I'm going to break this ruler over your knuckles?
“I can only say, definitively, that I never said those words. This is a hoax. Don't you think I know the center of M 31 is atypical? Come on, I took Tank's class. He's done most of the important work trying to explain that shi … situation.”
“You are not making this any easier on yourself by piling on the lies.”
“Alice, if I might?” Tank said leaning over to the recorder. He thumbed it off. “This is getting way out of hand. Here's what the three of us are going to do. Two of us, Shaky and I, are going to head to Starbucks. When we get there we're going to talk this non-incident out. One of us will stay behind, here, chill, and forget about the whole silly matter. Okay, Quadrangle Twin?”
“It is beyond that point, Sherm, and you know it.”
“Do you remember when you went to that fraternity party back in '22? Didn't you tell Frank you were working late that night?” He vibrated his almost-closed fist in the air, trying to jog his memory. “But, you actually went with Charlie Duncan. Am I crazy, or do I remember that correctly? Charlie was my unreliable roommate. Maybe he was just bragging about his conquests, you know, like a dude? I mean, you were an engaged woman, at the time, if memory serves.”
“You wouldn't dare,” Alice hissed at him.
“Dare? You want to dare me?”
“I don't know what Charlie told you, but I was working late that night. I happened to run into him afterwards. He walked me home.”
“So that's what they called it back then?” Tank waggled his eyebrows.
“Dr. Sherman. Upon reflection of Ms. Jones's otherwise outstanding record, I will leave this particular matter in your capable hands. I cannot say this passionately enough. If I learn of a similar—”
Tank shot to his feet. He reached over to shake Alice's hand. “I'll tell Charlie you said hi next time I see him.”
Returning a weak shake, she said, “I thought he died several years ago?”
Tank angled his head. “Then, I probably won't tell him for a while, will I, God willing?”
THREE
“Here ya go,” Tank said, as he sat across from Sachiko, and slid her a cup of tea.
He took a sip of the caloric abomination he'd ordered. She thought it was called a Cholesterolatte. He ended up with whipped cream on his mustache. “You got some—” She gestured toward his upper lip.
“Ah,” he said after swiping a napkin across his face. “Thanks. Always does that. Ya think I'd learn.”
“You wouldn't have to if you tried this,” she held up her cup.
“Probably stop my Lipitor, too, if I ate like a grown up. But hey, you only live once.” He toasted her.
“If not for quite as long.” She toasted him back.
“So, kiddo, what's going on? I want the honest truth. I'm your friend and whatever you say stays with me.”
“Tank, there's nothing to say. I never spoke those words. Why would I? I know you're not on Mars. We had dinner last week.”
He squirmed and took a sip. “Yeah, sorry about that. The charcoal was a lot hotter than I thought it was.”
“The middle was sort of edible. Kind of.”
“No it wasn't, but thanks. Look, Ted sent me the recording. He swears that's a message he received and it came with your personal encryption code. No one else could have sent it.”
“Russian bots?” She said, under her breath.
“Stay on the serious side, Shaky, okay? This could harpoon your entire career. I can only blackmail that idiot Alice once with her youthful indiscretion.”
“So she really did this Charlie character?” She giggled wickedly. “He must have had poor eyesight and/or a strong stomach.”
“No, he just had no standards. He couldn't define the word with a gun to his head. If it moved, it was fair game.”
“What if it didn't?”
“Just as fair, likely. She mentioned he died young, right? He finally had to pay the check his life choices ran up.” He frowned. “So where do we go from here? I personally don't care a cup of crap if you prank-messaged Mars 1. What I'm worried about is you. If you did send a message and don't remember … say, do you take drugs or smoke dope in the observatory? Maybe a cocktail or three?”
“Tank, I don't do drugs or smoke dope period. You know that. Come on.”
“I had to ask. I ran this by the wife. She said the reasons for an otherwise competent person to forget an act are either totally obvious or completely unfathomable. I'm running down the list Daisy gave me.”
“Well you can cross mind-altering substances off her list. I know stroke is on it, also, so ex that out, too.”
“Already did. That leaves TIA, migraine, transient global amnesia—”
He trailed off when he noted the look on her face. It wasn't, let's say, supportive.
“What?”
“I don't have any condition. Let it go.”
“Then why does this exist?” He held up the thumb drive.
“For some other reason.”
“Which is?”
“I have no idea. I'm not lying, impaired, or a sociopath.”
“That doesn't leave much.”
“It leaves off one reason. What actually happened.”
They sat quietly for a while, but had basically said all there was to say. Sachiko asked him to let her borrow the recording. He said she could keep it, and left. Sachiko sat there the better part of an hour staring at that damn thumb drive. What other way could she have sent this incorrect statement? She was missing something and Sachiko Jones didn't miss anything.
She went back to her office at the observatory and listened to the recording a dozen times. Sachiko became certain it didn't just sound like her. It really was her voice on the recording. The Andromeda sealed that. When she was a kid, reading about astronomy, she pronounced it with a long e in her head. She didn't have anyone to discuss her passion with, so she thought that mispronunciation for years. Sachiko finally learned the correct short e way to say it. But the old one slipped out occasionally. If she was tired or upset, it happened more often. Sachiko was clearly speaking in a panic on the recording, so the old pronunciation was likely to pop out of her mouth, automatically. It had.
Why would she say something so stupid on so many levels? As the sun went down, she took a break from her self-castigation. Sachiko did the one thing that always made her happy. She fired up a telescope and did some observing. The fact that she currently had an eight meter scope at her disposal was unimportant. She used an eight-incher, like she'd had when she was a kid.
Without realizing it, she found herself studying M 31. It really was beautiful. She couldn't recall the last time she'd just looked at it. Sachiko hadn't used a big scope to do so, ever. They were for research, not pure enjoyment. The Andromeda galaxy looked like it always had. Tight spiral arms, black, voided center, and that tiny linear channel of missing stars in the five o'clock direction. Tank, and every other cosmologist worth their salt, had been completely baffled by the hollow center and that little streak. They didn't make sense. But, then again, neither did dark energy, or why looking at chocolate made Sachiko gain weight. The universe was full …
She saw something she didn't recall seeing before. At 11:00. The stars adjacent to the central void were out of place. The disk was a tad thicker there. Sachiko found her CCD camera, and snapped a shot. She then pulled up previous images of the area from the internet. Using a digital subtraction program, she proved to her own satisfaction that the small patch of stars in that direction were displaced in roughly a spherical distribution. No way. She deleted her calculations and pulled up another observatory's images.
Same result. And it struck her as odd that the length of the 5:00 void and the 11:00 were a
pproximately the same. Now, why would that happen?
*********
“Tank, I need you to get over here ASAP.”
“Now?”
“No, ASAP. I think that's sooner.”
“Why?”
“I need to show you something you've never seen before.”
“So you think that's what I should tell Daisy? I'm rushing out in the night to see what my gorgeous grad student says I've never seen? Not sure she'd sign off on that one, kiddo.”
“Of course she would. Her mind doesn't live in the gutter. Seriously, get over here.” she hung up, and walked the short distance from her place to the university.
Thirty minutes later, Tank walked into her office. “This had better be worth Divorce Court, kiddo.”
“Ya big baby. Come here.” Sachiko slid her chair over and placed him in front of a large screen. “This is the live CCD image from the big scope.”
“Okay.”
“I have the image coned down to the central region—”
He set a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You know I wrote the book on the central void of M 31, right? I think I am significantly familiar with this region of space.”
“Okay, smartass, what's different?” She folded her arms and leaned back.
Tank scratched at his cheek and studied the screen. Occasionally he'd switch images or change filters. Finally he said, “Different? You know we haven't done much imaging of M 31with the eight meter. It's hard to say.”
“What is?”
He tapped the screen. “Is that smudge at eleven o'clock really there?”
“It is.”
“Oh, you say so, so it is? Glad to know ya, kiddo. You wield powerful magic.”
“I'm serious. I ran the numbers twice. It's small but it's real.”
“So what is it?”
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