Tedd Robertsis the pseudonym of neuroscience researcher Robert E. Hampson, Ph.D. For more than 35 years, he has studied physiology & pharmacology, learning & memory, and brain impairment in many forms (head injury, epilepsy, abused drugs and radiation). He is involved in a research collaboration to develop a “neural prosthetic” for restoring human memory function. A keen interest in public education and brain awareness led him to join the National Academy of Science’s Science and Entertainment Exchange, provide subject matter expertise to SF/F writers and game developers, and to write science fact articles and science fiction stories of his own. With more than 150 professional research articles, he chooses to publish his nonfiction ‘Science-in-Science Fiction’ articles and SF short stories under his pen name “so that my colleagues can tell the difference!” Dr. Hampson is a medical school professor, married for over 30 years, with two grown sons. In between travel, teaching, speaking, studying martial arts and playing trombone in a Brass Octet, he makes his home in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
Jennifer Rohn is Principal Research Associate in the Division of Medicine at University College London, United Kingdom. She has B.A. in Biology from Oberlin College, Ohio and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Washington in Seattle. She has been involved in cell, molecular and microbiological research in both academic and biotech settings in several different countries since 1989, and currently heads a research team investigating the subversive molecular behavior of the bacteria involved in chronic urinary tract infection. Jennifer also has a long-standing interest in the portrayal of scientists in fiction. She coined the term “lab lit’ and founded the popular science/culture website LabLit.com to encourage more writers to use science and scientists in their everyday fiction. She has written two novels, Experimental Heart and The Honest Look , both published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press and loosely inspired by her experiences in biology laboratories over the years. Her short fiction has appeared in Nature and The Human Genre Project .
J. M. Sidorova holds a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and she is a faculty member of the University of Washington School of Medicine, where she studies DNA replication in normal and cancerous human cells. J.M.’s science fiction and fantasy short stories appeared in Clarkesworld , Asimov’s , Abyss and Apex , and other venues. Her debut novel The Age of Ice (Simon & Schuster), nine parts history, one part magic realism, was featured on Locus Magazine ’s recommended reading list, and received an honorable mention on Tor.com ’s best fiction of 2013 list. As a translator, she contributed to the Red Star Tales , an anthology of Russian science fiction (Russian Life Books, 2015). She is a graduate of the Clarion West workshop. She can be found online at www.jmsidorova.com .
Ken Wharton has been a physics professor at San Jose State University since 2001. His research is in Quantum Foundations, a field that strives for a deeper account of quantum theory and a better understanding of what quantum phenomena might be telling us about our universe. (A general-level essay describing Dr. Wharton’s overall research program can be found online under the title “The Universe is not a Computer”.) His 2001 novel Divine Intervention (Ace) was awarded the Special Citation for the Philip K. Dick award, and he has also been a finalist for both the Nebula and the Campbell Awards.
J. Craig Wheeler is the Samuel T. and Fern Yanagisawa Regents Professor of Astronomy, Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and past Chair of the Department. He has published nearly 300 refereed scientific papers, as many meeting proceedings, a popular book on supernovae and gamma-ray bursts ( Cosmic Catastrophes ), two novels ( The Krone Experiment and Krone Ascending ), and has edited six books. He co-wrote a screenplay of The Krone Experiment with his son, Rob, that Rob subsequently made into an independent microbudget film. Wheeler has received many awards for his teaching, including the Regents Award, and is a popular science lecturer. He was a visiting fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and a Fulbright Fellow in Italy. He has served on a number of agency advisory committees, including those for the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Research Council. He has held many positions in the American Astronomical Society and was President of the Society from 2006 to 2008. He currently serves on the AAS Ebooks committee. His research interests include supernovae, black holes and astrobiology.
© The Author 2017
Michael Brotherton (ed.)Science Fiction by ScientistsScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-41102-6_1
Down and Out
Ken Wharton1
(1)San Jose State University, San Jose, USA
Ogby trudged up the seamount, expanding her bladders as forcefully as she could, but the effort didn’t gain her much weight. Her body was becoming so light it felt like the current was going to sweep her away, footholds or no footholds.
The surrounding spectrum shifted oddly for a moment. Ogby paused in confusion until she saw three lampfish swimming just above her head, altering the artificial light patterns on the icy slope. She jealously watched the fish swim against the current. The biologists were now claiming that Rygors must have once been able to maneuver like fish, way back in their own evolutionary past. But her more recent ancestors had forgotten how to swim, spending their lives pinned to the bottom of the ocean by the bladders in each of their five feet. And while swimming might have been useful at these elevations, apparently her ancestors never had a need to come up this high. Or perhaps, considered Ogby, they had been petrified of being swept upward to their deaths.
She cautiously peered to the left to see how high they had come, and was struck by a vicious wave of vertigo. The city lights at the bottom of the seamount looked impossibly far away. Expanding her bladders helped fight the sensation, but not much; her muscles were weak after spending so much time in the Deeps. She closed her eyes and forced herself to draw in a long, continuous jet of water through her funnels. The feeling will pass, she told herself.
By the time she opened her eyes, the others had stopped ahead to wait for her. “I heard she was afraid of heights,” Roov was chroming to no one in particular.
Ogby flashed the group an apologetic pattern, while simultaneously soning for them to “GO AHEAD.” She was embarrassed to have slowed down the whole group, but they refused to move on until Ogby resumed her climb.
After another five milliflexes of hiking, Ogby finally joined the others at the top of the seamount. Her feet were tender and sore from stretching her bladders, but she had made it to the Boarding Station.
Roov was clearly not having the same troubles — he even let go of the footholds and performed a little hop to show his lack of fear. Ogby wondered who he was showing off for. Vyrv, perhaps? But Vyrv was already in the ship, beckoning the rest of them to enter.
Ogby tipped back her head and looked up at the cable, stretching from the top of the ship into the darkness above. She was worried. If she had been afraid of heights on the mount, how would she feel, suspended underneath the very roof of the world?
Intellectually, she knew it would be safe. She would be inside the entire time, at a controlled pressure. And even if the cable snapped, the ship had an active buoyancy control. But her fear was stronger than her logic, and a sudden wave of fresh panic nearly kept her from entering the ship.
In the end it was her scientific curiosity that won. The interesting research was happening Above. If she wanted to participate in the latest discoveries, she would have to conquer her fears. She grimly stepped inside the ship to join the others.
The workers closed the hatch, locking in the water pressure for the remainder of the journey. As Ogby stretched her sore fingers, one foot at a time, she noted that the cabin interior was almost identical to the ships she piloted down in the Deeps. On one side were the primary controls: wheels and levers that controlled the compressed air tanks to regulate the ship’s buoyancy. In the center were the cylindrical passenger ben
ches, with those new plastic seat-covers made from greenfish oil. Ogby straddled a bench and strapped herself in. The other passengers did the same, all except Roov who took the control seat.
“I always insist on piloting the ship myself,” chromed Roov to the others. “Just in case there’s an emergency.”
Ogby tried not to show her exasperation. Roov was full of himself, but he was also one of the most influential scientists in the ocean. His discovery Above of the new element “gold” had made him famous with the average citizen, and he had been able to use his clout to funnel additional money into the overhead research and mining efforts. If it hadn’t been for Roov’s tacit approval, Ogby wouldn’t be here right now.
A sudden lurch, and then the ship was in motion. Ogby averted her gaze from the windows; the sight of the Boarding Station dropping away beneath her would do little to calm her nerves.
The altimeter needle on the control panel was rising rapidly; they were already a full kilolength above standard ground. Six more and they’d be at the top of the ocean.
“This is your first time up, too?” Vyrv asked her.
“Yes,” chromed Ogby. “I’ve spent a lot of time in these ships, but never way up here.”
“Oh?” Vyrv seemed surprised. “Where, then? Down in the Deeps? Didn’t think there was much down there. Just ice.”
“There has to be something,” Ogby insisted. “Whirlpools must go somewhere.”
Roov joined his colors into the conversation, ignoring the controls now that the counterweight was lifting them at the proper speed. “Whirlpools are an anomaly; everyone knows that ice is heavier than water. The way I see it, natural causation moves downward, with us Rygors the ultimate consequence at the bottom. Think about it. We eat the fish, which in turn eat the microscopic life, which in turn feed off the vents we’ve found Above. But what powers the vents? What’s above the Above? Why does the ground flex in such a predictable rhythm? When we get to the top I’ll show you the new excavation; we’ve dug higher up into the rock than ever before. I’m sure that one day we’ll break through to Outside, find out that our ocean is just a small part of a much bigger universe.”
“You believe in Outside?” Vryv asked wryly.
“There must be an Outside,” chromed Roov in all seriousness. “Yrvo’s voyage proved that you can drift around the world, proved the ocean is a spherical shell. Something has to be outside.”
“Not necessarily,” flashed Ogby, hoping she wasn’t being too impertinent. “For all we know, the rock up there goes out to infinity.”
Roov turned his full attention in her direction, and paused before responding. “Instead of trying to disparage our work, you might take a look at your own. You’ve been digging in the ice for a kiloflex, and what have you discovered?”
Ogby didn’t respond. In all of her Deep excavations, she had found precious little of interest. All of the major new discoveries had been made Above: the new elements, the new lifeforms, the Vents, the bubble factories. Below she had found only ice.
“I’m not disparaging you,” Ogby insisted. “I would like very much to join your team.”
“If so,” chromed Roov, “the first thing you’re going to have to do is prove you can handle the height.”
Roov’s colors dimmed, and little else was discussed for the remainder of the journey. Eventually the ship lurched to a halt. They had arrived at the top of the ocean.
After docking with the main habitat, the hatch opened and warm water diffused into the cabin. This was a curious fact no one had yet explained, Ogby knew. Up here the water was slightly warmer than down below. Yet the super-hot water from the Vents was heavy and carried the nutrients straight down to the bottom of the ocean. It didn’t make sense to her, but then again, a lot of things about gravity didn’t make sense.
Ogby was the second passenger to step out into the cylindrical walkway. The corridors were thinly air-cushioned; not so deep that she couldn’t get traction, but still more comfortable than a solid floor.
Roov began the tour when everyone had left the ship. “Over here,” he chromed, “are the intake valves. Specially designed to keep the water fresh without changing the interior pressure. But I’m sure you’ll be more interested in the Vents. Come this way.”
As Ogby approached the observation deck she had a premonition of disaster. Yes, she was interested in the Vents, but somehow she hadn’t considered that in order to see outside of the habitat there must be windows. And with windows, she might look down. There would be no pretending that she was in a structure at the bottom of the ocean; her tremendous height was about to become very obvious. The thought made her fingers twitch in nervous anticipation.
And the reality was even worse. Instead of simply a room with glass portholes in the walls, the floor was also covered with small windows. She forced her attention upward before stepping in.
The observation deck was a circular platform built next to a particularly large Vent. The Vent itself looked like a narrow upside-down seamount, made out of rock instead of ice. Ogby kept her gaze high, examining the less-interesting upper portions of the Vent. Streaks of color told most of the geological story; some sort of material had sprayed out of the bottom of the Vent and then oozed up the sides before solidifying.
But the others were all looking through the floor, filling the room with color as they chromed their appreciation. Reluctantly, curiously, Ogby lowered her gaze.
It was a fantastic display. Superhot squirts of water pulsed regularly from the opening, so hot that they glowed in the far red. The surrounding water was also quite warm; a faint glow surrounded the entire bottom half of the Vent.
Ogby had never seen natural light before. To her, all light came from animals, Rygors, or Rygor-made objects like sonoluminescent lamps. On some primal level she felt the natural beacon summoning her, just as it must have summoned the creatures that teemed in the red glow. There were no familiar deep-water fish, but plenty of new species: a fish with far more fins than seemed necessary, another organism shaped like a slow-moving net, even a little 5-legged cutie which looked almost like a miniature Rygor.
This was where life started, she knew. This was where she needed to be. Up here she could find the answers she was looking for, figure out how the world worked. Down below lay only....
Down below.
Ogby couldn’t help herself, and once she looked down it was impossible to stop. There were tiny lights down there, she saw, swimming against the black background. Black, because the bright lights from the cities couldn’t reach these heights.
The distance hit her all at once. I’m too high, she thought. I’m too high.
Now the others were trying to talk to her, trying to get her to respond, but she didn’t dare move. She wanted more than anything to get back to the ship, to get back to the ground, but she couldn’t even walk off the deck.
She dimly realized she was being carried somewhere, with her eyes closed. Still, the fear wouldn’t stop. “WAKE,” someone soned at her, the sound reverberating painfully from the habitat walls. She felt herself shutting down, ancient survival mechanisms having their way with her body. At last her consciousness drifted deeper than even the bottom of the ocean, and all was dark.
***
“You’ve got to get back out there,” Boro insisted, back in Ogby’s underground web three flexes later.
Ogby watched her mate disinterestedly, wondering if she’d even keep him for another season. “What does it matter?” she chromed dimly. “I had one chance. I blew it. Roov won’t let me try again.”
Boro shook his middle legs before continuing. “I’m not telling you to get back up there. Just get back to work. There’s plenty of interesting science you can do down here. The techs in the factory have been asking about you since yesterflex.”
“I don’t want to do science anymore,” she responded. “I just want to be left alone.”
“So you’re through? You can’t go Above, so instead you’re just going to quit ev
erything?” Boro turned away from her, but continued to chrome from his back. “What about your pressure calculations? I know you still think there’s something under the ice.”
“NO,” she soned at him, but Boro didn’t even turn around. In fact, now he was leaving, just like she had asked. She almost soned him to STOP, but her pride kept her quiet, and soon he was out of the web completely.
Still, maybe Boro was right. After seeing the splendor of the Vents and the mysteries they contained, she had forgotten about the more mundane problems she studied down here.
The physics had been known even to the ancients. A flexible bladder of air would change its size depending on elevation, and that in turn would change its weight. The fact that bladder size was proportional to weight had been known for hundreds of generations, possibly even megaflexes. But only recently, using the new excavators, had anyone been able to measure the effect deep below ground level.
Ogby herself had spearheaded the largest excavation yet, melting a kilolength deep into the ice. Roov was correct that she hadn’t discovered anything down there, but she had discovered that the gravity continued to rise, even deep underground. And when she extrapolated the curve, it looked like gravity should go to infinity just 2.8 kilolengths below standard ground.
According to most other scientists, this was nonsense. Infinities were mathematical, not real. Yes, the ocean was a spherical shell, so they admitted something odd might happen down at the very center. But based on the calculations from Yrvo’s round-the-world voyage, the distance to the center should have been megalengths, not kilolengths. No, the other scientists insisted, the change in gravity must slow with depth.
Science Fiction by Scientists: An Anthology of Short Stories (Science and Fiction) Page 2