“Yes, of course, dear,” he said. Normally, any reference to her mother would have made him upset, but now he was just thankful that Mary was still here.
The traffic report said there was a backup on Interstate 635, so after Olathe, he turned onto I-435. Derek looked at the time. The little detour would cost them five minutes, but they still should get there in plenty of time. Mary wanted to get to the airport by the time the airplane with her mother was scheduled to land. Derek thought that was being unnecessarily punctual, but he didn’t argue.
The Kansas City Airport was originally built a century ago, back in the 1980s. Someone might think that it would be preserved as a historical site, but government subsidies for renovations were apparently flowing into the wrong pockets. In any case, the processing of the incoming passengers would take so long that they would have plenty of time, even if they had sat in the backup on I-635.
“Which airline is she flying?” he asked.
Mary had been humming different melodies the whole time. She was looking forward to seeing her mother, and her obviously good mood was contagious.
“Delta. I didn’t want to put her on one of those cheap airlines. I hope that was okay?” Mary looked at him with uncertainty. She knew how precarious their finances were.
“I understand. I was only asking so I’d know which terminal to go to.”
“Terminal B, I think,” Mary said.
“Thanks,” Derek replied.
Ten minutes before the scheduled landing, Derek let Mary out right in front of the terminal entrance near baggage claim, the only spot where you were allowed to meet passengers. Then there was no chance she would be late.
Derek drove the truck into the parking lot for Terminal B. The automatic monitoring camera photographed their license plate. He inserted his credit card into the parking machine, hoping the bank would approve the charge. The gate opened.
“Phew,” he said out loud.
He parked the vehicle in one of the many free spots. The last time he had been here, the lot had been almost full. There had been quite a few cars on the road, but not as many people seemed to be traveling by airplane. Was it because of the rift? At the moment, everything seemed to be affected by it. That’s crazy, Derek thought. The rift is just so unavoidably noticeable that we stupid humans think it must be responsible for everything that’s happening right now. The rift didn’t appear to be any danger to airplanes, because otherwise the authorities would have closed the airspace a long time ago. He himself had seen how... no, that was crazy, he hadn’t seen anything.
He suddenly felt something like déjà vu, only in reverse. He knew for sure that he had never experienced a certain situation that he could see clearly in his mind’s eye. He had seen an airplane disappearing into the rift. Completely impossible. That would have been all over the media, and he hadn’t been the only one looking up at the sky at that moment. Beside him had been a doctor, and Mary, of course.
Derek snorted loudly through his nose. Is there even such a thing as reverse déjà vu? It felt strange, in any case, like a tower made from blocks, but someone had removed a block from its center so that the structure should have to collapse, and yet it keeps standing, even when he pushes against it.
He tried to remember the explanation for the déjà vu feeling. According to psychiatrists, a few memories etched a path in a person’s mind. A new picture occupies a signal path directly adjacent to the previous path, but it slips into the wrong track. It was as if he had set a drill bit too close to another drill hole. The drill slips, and the new and the old holes join together. Just like that, a feeling of déjà vu is produced.
But the opposite? Derek scratched his head. That must be a different mechanism. He knew that he didn’t remember the picture in his head. Maybe he should ask the Turkish doctor. Doctors knew about things like that.
He looked at the time. Shit, he had to get into the terminal. His wife didn’t know where he was parking. And he didn’t want to give her mother any reason to get mad at him already.
Dinner at home was surprisingly pleasant. Mary had cooked like before, when Elizabeth had still lived at home. There were ribs and mashed potatoes. While they ate, his mother-in-law told them about everything that had happened to her since Thanksgiving. The days bubbled out of her like foam on a hastily poured beer. Derek switched himself off. His brain automatically muted the storytelling to just a low rumble. Now and then he looked over at Mary. She smiled on and on. She was really happy that her mother was there. Her father, like both of Derek’s parents, had died many years ago, and Mary’s mother had never had many friends.
Derek was under the impression that Mary also wasn’t really listening to her mother, but now and then she would say something that fit at least well enough that it didn’t make her mother suspect she wasn’t listening. He would have liked to take Mary upstairs right then and have sex with her. She would ride on top of him. He would reach up to touch her breasts that had grown a bit saggy over the years, and look into her eyes. Derek licked his lips.
“Derek?”
He turned red.
“What are you thinking about?” Mary asked.
He sat up straight. With his left hand he pushed his stiff penis between his legs. He felt like a little boy, who’d been caught being naughty. No, it was like that time in that restaurant, when he had watched Mary the whole time while sitting at the bar...
She had been sitting at a table with two friends and had eventually moved her chair to turn her back to him. But then she had suddenly stood up and come up to him and asked him what he wanted with her.
“To get to know you,” had stumbled out of his mouth.
He had not planned to say anything. He had been much too shy for that at the time. But his few words had hit their mark. “I was just thinking of that time in the restaurant,” he said, “when you came up to me and talked to me for the first time.”
“You still remember that?” She looked astonished. “Why haven’t you ever mentioned it before? I had started to think I’d imagined it.”
“As if it were yesterday,” he said, putting his hand on hers.
“What are you two talking about?” Mary’s mother asked. “Remember me? Didn’t you hear what I was saying about my neighbor? Is she not the most outrageous person?”
Mary’s mother didn’t really want to know what had happened that day in the restaurant. But that was okay, Derek thought. She had her own worries and seemed to be happy to finally be able to let it all out. He was feeling extremely forgiving today.
But the magical moment that had just happened in the dining room was over.
May 25, 2085, Vandenberg Air Force Base
The rocket waiting on Launch Pad 2C was unusually small. The military site in California, which was shared by Air Force and Space Force personnel, usually hosted the launches of space rockets for missions by NASA or private space companies. But the Black Brant XV currently on the launch pad didn’t have to go that far.
Glen Sparrow was happy that he’d been able to find one of these old sounding rockets, originally used to perform scientific experiments during sub-orbital flight. Since there were now three private companies offering suborbital flights, the branch of research using this type of rocket had been on the decline for a long time. But he didn’t need a manned ship that would ever have to be reused. That would be much too dangerous—and expensive—since the companies would charge him five-times the normal price. All he needed was a hunk of metal that could climb into the sky under its own control, one that nobody cared if they ever saw again or not.
Glen ran his hand over his bald head. His palm was wet. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d started sweating. It had been quite a logistical feat for him to get a rocket ready for launch in such a short amount of time. But there was no one there to tell him he’d done a good job. His superiors had remained back at JPL in Pasadena. And Maribel Pedreira was still on her way. For some reason he didn’t understand, he really wanted to show her hi
s experiment. He was surrounded by soldiers and officers who were performing the actual hands-on work of launching his rocket, and they were not at all impressed.
“Sorry, but cruise missiles are bigger,” one of the soldiers had told him.
“What were you expecting?”
Maybe it would have been better to ask the military first. A ground-to-air missile would have worked too. However, he was hoping to get something useful from the measuring instruments with which the Black Brant XV was equipped. They would at least deliver data to him until the rocket went into the rift. As far as he knew, this was the first experiment of its kind. He had asked himself several times why nobody had shot a rocket at the phenomenon before. Wasn’t it an obvious thing to do? Or did the scientists have too much respect for it?
“T minus 20,” said the young woman next to him. She was busy watching several screens. He didn’t know the Navy ranks. She had introduced herself as some kind of lieutenant, but he’d forgotten it. And he didn’t remember her name, so he just called her ‘Ms.’
Twenty minutes more. The rocket, which he could see from various angles on multiple screens, looked lost and unstable, as if the slightest breeze could knock it over. With its 44-centimeter diameter and almost 15-meter length, it reminded him of an upright pencil. Actually he felt a little bad for it. It was the last of its kind to have been built. Theoretically it could reach an altitude of 900 kilometers, but its flight path today would only take it eight to ten kilometers above the ground. Its solid-propellant engine had proven very reliable. Except for the first two launches in the past century, there had never been any failures, and that was saying something with rocket technology.
“T minus 15.”
Glen nodded. First he sat down, and then he stood up again. The woman ignored him. She was probably having to do an extra shift right now and would rather be with her family. Wasn’t there anybody who could come and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder? He knew that wasn’t going to happen. Usually, Glen himself was the calm presence. Perhaps it was the prospect of at last approaching the rift that had him feeling jumpy? Or was he afraid that the rift could misunderstand the experiment and fight back?
That’s crazy, he thought. It’s an unknown physical phenomenon. It can’t fight back.
“T minus 10.”
“Ms.?”
The woman turned around and glared at him, as if he were disturbing her while she was performing an important task. But maybe she only appeared mad because she was wearing a uniform. People in uniform always intimidated him a little. Even when he had done nothing wrong.
Shit. Now I’ve forgotten what I wanted to ask her. “Sorry,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. He was reminded of Mr. Spock. His father had loved Star Trek. The woman might be just over 30. Most likely, she had never even heard of the sci-fi television show from the last century. He could explain to her that the concept for the Black Brant had been developed at that time. But she was probably more interested in the monster rockets made by SpaceX & Co. Glen sat down again.
“T minus 5.”
Glen stuck both hands under his legs. He had to find some way to stop himself from fidgeting. The woman had already given him several clearly-disapproving looks. He had the feeling that she would put him under arrest if he couldn’t figure out a way to sit still.
Two people and one rocket. When he had started at JPL 25 years ago, things had been quite different. The press had always come, even for the launch of a sounding rocket.
But that was not being entirely fair. If he had alerted the press about what he was doing, there would have been 20 reporters crowded around him and he could have said goodbye to his job. Anything that had to do with the rift was a big seller, even if CNN had stopped its continuous live broadcast yesterday, and media outlets worldwide had started reporting on other topics as well. He was surprised how quickly people had gotten used to the phenomenon over their heads. They talked about it, but no longer seemed to be afraid of it. There also didn’t seem to be any reason for fear, which was different than when that black hole had approached them.
“T minus 60 seconds.”
Nothing changed on the launch pad. The signal for lift-off would be given electronically. Glen stood next to the woman. A pair of monitors there belonged to him. They would show what the instruments on board the Black Brant XV were measuring.
The woman began with the countdown. Glen’s palms felt clammy. He wiped them on his pants. The instruments woke up 30 seconds before launch. Then he waited for the rumbling, the deep roar. It reached him milliseconds after the launch command, and it wasn’t particularly loud. The rocket seemed to launch on just fumes—obviously it did not require much fuel. Nevertheless, it looked elegant as it rose into the sky, riding atop a stream of fire, much more elegant than those giant rockets from Space-X. Glen imagined a swan.
But he couldn’t let himself get distracted. The instruments showed air pressure, temperature, air humidity, etc., and also the distance to the rift. The rocket wouldn’t need long to cover a distance of only about ten kilometers. The instrument displays showed the numbers that he had been expecting. The rift still showed no signs of affecting its environment, not even its immediate surroundings. Shouldn’t air molecules be constantly falling into it? Wouldn’t that change the air pressure? But that didn’t seem to be the case. The rift seemed to pose no direct threat, at least as far as he could tell.
Now there were only a few more seconds. Glen cracked his knuckles. The camera on the rocket’s nose showed a wide, black streak. Glen thought that he could see nothingness in there, and that it was staring back at him. He wiped the sweat from his bald head. Then the rocket was gone.
“Thank you very much for the short tour, Ms.,” Glen said.
He looked around. Next to him, a few screens showed an empty launch pad. Tomorrow or the day after that, but at the latest at the start of next week, a rocket should be standing there, or at least that’s what he was hoping. Someone needed to finally test what would happen if something was sent into the rift! But first he had to find a rocket that was ready to launch. There had been nothing suitable in JPL’s hangars. But maybe the Canadians still had an old sounding rocket in storage somewhere.
“Call me anytime, Mr. Sparrow,” the woman said. “We’d be very happy to run your launch for you. We’re underutilized at the moment. So you’d be doing us a real favor, too.”
“Of course. Now I just need to find a rocket, and I’m trying to stay positive.” Glen shook her hand. “Thank you and have a nice evening,” he said.
“You too.”
He walked to the door, where a soldier was waiting for him. Then he noticed that he was sweating heavily.
“Man, does it feel hot in here to you too?”
The soldier shook his head and accompanied him outside to his car.
May 25, 2085, Ceres
The cleft had kept him up the whole night. The theory of general relativity predicted the existence of black holes—they were the result of solutions to its partial differential equations. But did this relate to this new phenomenon? M6 was an explorer AI, he was not specialized in theoretical physics, but he had mastered everything that he might need on long trips through space. He could solve Kepler’s equations in no time at all. Even the special theory of relativity presented him with no problems, but until now he had no reason to work with such large scales. He could now work out everything himself, but there was an easier way—he could install a suitable upgrade. He would have to request the upgrade from Earth, but he would need to supply a reason for his request.
M6 thought it over. Until now he’d been studying the cleft without official orders. That had given him a great deal of satisfaction and enjoyment. Orders from Earth were sometimes exceedingly stupid, and his pleasure seemed to be greater when he could set his goals himself. He assumed that his reward center had been programmed that way so that he wouldn’t waste his time if he had no official jobs. Should he inform Earth? He decided
against it. Probably nobody would ask what he needed the upgrade for, but if they did, he had a reason ready—he was trying to improve his position-determining capabilities in space. M6 knew that he wasn’t the only explorer. They were numbered consecutively and deployed to worlds where mining was not yet permitted. If his information was correct, his youngest sibling was named M17.
He carefully lowered himself onto his legs and pointed his antenna towards Earth. He sent a few current positioning data packets and a request for the upgrade. He felt strangely excited, as if he were doing something forbidden. At the same time, he knew, to the best of his knowledge, that his programming wouldn’t let him violate any laws.
May 26, 2085, Pomona, Kansas
“Derek, you have to get up.”
He couldn’t open his eyes. Derek turned on his side, away from the window through which bright sunlight was streaming.
“Derek, it’s time.”
He pulled the pillow out from under his head and put it over his ear. It felt like his skull was going to shatter. ‘Shit. That last beer must have been bad,’ is what his buddy, Doug, would say. He’d spent last night with him, just like every other night.
“Derek, you’re going to be late.”
That damn robot. Couldn’t it tell that he didn’t feel well? He was sick! He would tell it to call into work. But then he remembered who he had run into yesterday at the bar: Isaac, his boss, the foreman. The way his boss was, he would come here and pull him out of bed if he tried to call in sick. Which would be a nice gesture, since Derek had already missed so many work hours he was in danger of being let go. Then not even Isaac could do anything for him.
The Rift: Hard Science Fiction Page 7