Away Saga

by Norman Oro

  Guy Pool just stood there for a moment. It took a few seconds for Dr. Marshall’s words to sink in and break through decades-old preconceptions. Eventually his first thought was, “Of course.” It was perhaps just an idiosyncrasy of their era to have assumed that Allen fields were purely artificial. Of course.

  According to Professor Marshall, naturally occurring Allen fields seemed to be ephemeral things. Based on what he cautioned was very preliminary work, they didn’t seem to ever approach the critical energy threshold needed to send objects. Furthermore, they seemed to always blink into and out of existence within fractions of a second. Nonetheless, he felt it was quite a discovery. Guy Pool couldn’t help but agree. With an eye always toward the second field condition, though, he asked Dr. Marshall whether the device was ready to be deployed in the detector system they’d been planning. He responded that he’d designed the prototype with their network specifications in mind and foresaw no deployment problems. However, there was a potential issue with the device’s economics.

  Professor Marshall explained that each shimmering granule whirling inside the detector was actually a kind of machine built at the molecular level, costing about $75 each. As a result, though it wasn’t exorbitant on its own, the materials needed to build the prototype cost just over $1 million. At that, Guy Pool understood. If they could only get a one mile range on average out of each device, a sensor network blanketing the world could easily run into the billions of dollars. Running a back-of-the-envelope calculation, he saw that it would actually run well into the trillions of dollars for the detectors alone. Even with their considerable wealth, he estimated they’d need devices with ranges of about 450 miles for the detector network to be financially viable. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Professor Marshall nodded and said that he’d think about it. That night, just after returning from dinner with Piper Finesine, Guy Pool got a call on his mobile telephone. It was Dr. Marshall. After exchanging greetings, he simply asked, “So, what do you think of satellites?”

  The proposal was brilliant. Commercial launch services were available that regularly put private satellites into Earth orbit. Because Allen fields radiated their characteristic particles in all directions, having detectors in space would practically eliminate the interference caused by terrestrial obstructions such as mountain ranges and buildings. Instead of a legion of detectors dotting the world’s continents and oceans, Professor Marshall believed that a system of ten orbital detectors could do the job at a fraction of the cost. With an estimated price tag of $500 million including ground control facilities and personnel, it wouldn’t be cheap, but it was certainly viable. In terms of receiving telemetry, they could probably use the 395 Array. Although it’d originally been designed to detect Dr. Rys’s beacon, they could in all likelihood modify it to receive signals from satellite transmitters, as well. After discussing it with Congressman Gidsen for about an hour, they all agreed to begin work on the system as soon as possible, shouldering the cost equally.

  Preparing for the first satellite’s launch required about a year. Though it wasn’t trivial, adapting the field detector to go into orbit went smoothly, taking Dr. Marshall six months to complete. He’d modified his prototype to the point where ten detectors in orbit would suffice to register the world’s Allen field activity. In the process, the latest version of the device had grown to three feet in diameter. After reinforcing its spherical housing, he linked it to a satellite assembly with solar panels, a radio transmitter-receiver and a thruster module. To minimize weight, the sensor particulates would float in a vacuum instead of the water-based solution he’d used for the Earth-bound prototype. Working with Dr. Finesine, he based the launch schedule and orbits on Transit, a precursor to the Global Positioning System. In fact, the detectors would function similarly. However, instead of a group of satellites beaming signals that terrestrial devices could use to determine location, Field Technologies’ satellites would detect particles beamed from ground-based Allen fields to determine the sources’ locations.

  Once the necessary approvals were secured for the orbital slots the satellites would occupy, a January 2007 launch date was set for the first detector to go into a geostationary orbit above the equator. There’d eventually be six satellites in geostationary orbit that together would be able to detect Allen field activity for most of the world. An additional four satellites would then be launched in a lower sun synchronous orbit to provide more detailed telemetry and coverage of the polar regions. The first launch would serve as a sort of trial run to calibrate the detector and verify calculations regarding how much of the Earth’s surface each device could cover. Should that go well, all ten detectors would be in orbit sometime around the middle of 2011. Since Professor Marshall, Guy Pool and Dr. Gidsen were fond of foreign languages, they named the system “Vela”, which in Spanish meant “watch” or “vigil”.

  While launch preparations were under way, Guy Pool and Dr. Marshall initiated upgrades to the 395 Array, the automated network of short-wave radio receivers they’d commissioned in 1960 to listen for the US-395 beacon. As they did then, they contracted out a team of electrical engineering graduate students for the work. This time, Professor Marshall tasked engineers from UC Santa Barbara with bringing the system up to date and expanding its capabilities to include receiving signals from the Vela satellites. Based on their reports, the array had held up remarkably well. The original team’s claim that it would last forever was apparently no idle boast. Still, the subsequent decades had created a few opportunities for improvement. The network was boosted significantly in terms of the signals that it could detect. Also, transmissions received would be routed then stored on a secure server from which they could be analyzed or, as in the case of the satellite telemetry, decrypted then mapped online in real-time. Guy Pool and Dr. Marshall privately hoped it wouldn’t come to it, but by New Year’s Day 2007, the engineers reported that the 395 Array was ready for another forty years of service.

  Just a few days after upgrades to the array were complete, the first detector satellite, Vela 1A, launched. Professor Marshall made the drive down to Long Beach, so he could witness the afternoon liftoff from the Odyssey Launch Platform himself. It occurred without a hitch. Because of its orbit, Vela 1A could actually be seen through a telescope from Carpinteria, seeming to hover motionless in the sky, never straying. A couple of days later, Dr. Marshall, Guy Pool and Piper Finesine all gathered in a small office at Field Technologies to watch the first images from the satellite. Congressman Gidsen was on speakerphone waiting to view the telemetry through a secure connection to his home computer in Arlington.

  Vela 1A’s orbit was over 20,000 miles away, so there’d be about a quarter-second delay before the signal reached Earth. Once the downlink with the 395 Array was established, however, they’d get their first glimpse of Allen field telemetry for an area encompassing most of the Americas, as well as large swaths of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The telemetry would be mapped onto an aerial view of the region, which was displayed on a large flat-screen monitor mounted to the office wall. Because the screen’s picture was so sharp and its housing was made of wood, it looked more like a framed satellite photograph than a computer monitor. Major cities, mountain ranges and lakes were all readily distinguishable on the map. When the satellite downlink was established at three in the afternoon, the office’s desktop computer began displaying Vela 1A’s telemetry.

  It was beautiful. Areas roughly corresponding to the cities and highways of the Americas now glimmered with activity. If they didn’t know any better, they would’ve said that they were viewing a night image of the region instead of the day image that it was. It would’ve been easy to believe that except that there was a pulse of light many times brighter than anything else on the map sitting almost dead center in the lower half of California where there was only desert. It was Pueblo. Furthermore, the glimmer of the cities and roads didn’t seem to heed the shorelines; instead it branched outward sporadically into the Earth’s
oceans, as though there were underwater Allen fields interconnecting her seas. It was probably a glitch, but stunning nevertheless. Almost an hour passed before anyone said anything.

  “Jeremy, what have you done?”

  “I did nothing, Guy. Without your wife’s help or Michael’s vision none of this would’ve been possible.”

  As for Piper Finesine, like everyone else, she marveled at the telemetry the map displayed. Only knowing that the glimmers of light represented “certain energetic events” somehow didn’t detract at all from that. Guy Pool sat next to her amazed at how far they’d come. Deploying the Allen field detector system was finally under way and at no cost to the US taxpayer. He didn’t have Dr. Gidsen’s keen sense for politics, but he was convinced that if they could jog the government’s memory, there’d be little room to argue against resuming the project. And by extension, there’d be little room to argue against building another field generator. As for Representative Gidsen, he hadn’t said anything; however, his silence was eloquent enough.

  Over the next few years, more satellites went up, each one revealing new corners of the world. Aside from the inexplicable level of activity detected in the Earth’s oceans, the naturally occurring fields seemed to mirror human population patterns, which was itself remarkable. Although Dr. Marshall analyzed the field patterns from time to time out of general curiosity, his priority was to build the detector network. By early 2009, he’d developed an algorithm that filtered out most of the ambient low-level Allen field activity, so the satellites identified only generator locations, of which to his relief he could find only one: the Maytag.

  With work on the Vela system well under way, Dr. Marshall continued gradually phasing himself out of university life in order to devote more time to the project and to make room for the latest generation of brilliant young physicists seeking careers in academia. Even at seventy-three years old, however, he instinctively resisted disengaging from the community he’d been a part of for so long. It was an act of will, but he was just able to continue following through on his retirement as he’d planned. Aside from a few seminars, he’d stopped teaching entirely at UC Santa Barbara and focused mainly on advising PhD candidates regarding their dissertations.

  One of his most brilliant students was a young woman named Katherine “Kate” Minon, who specialized in quantum mechanics. She was due to graduate with her PhD in spring and he was her dissertation advisor. As with Piper Finesine years earlier and his own wife years before that, he was at first struck by Kate Minon’s physical beauty. And as with them, after only a few minutes speaking with her, the vitality of her intellect came to the fore.

  During winter term in 2009, she was his teaching assistant for a graduate seminar on string theory; and had arranged to deliver some proposed reading assignments on Saturday, January 3rd. Normally she’d simply drop them off at his office on-campus. However, he had some work at his company he needed to finish and she had to catch a flight in Los Angeles, so they’d agreed to meet just outside of his company’s offices instead at half past three.

  It was 3:15pm when Dr. Marshall completed running diagnostics on Vela 5A and got it into pre-launch configuration. Liftoff was scheduled for January 7th and he was making good time. Not having eaten all day, he decided to get a late lunch from a fast food restaurant downstairs. He locked the lab room door behind him then closed the front office door, but left it unlocked because it’d recently developed a tendency to jam. Just a week earlier, in fact, it took him over a half hour to open it. Also, he usually needed less than ten minutes to get lunch then bring it back. He walked downstairs, turned the corner and entered the restaurant to find it almost empty. On his way to the counter, he walked past a young lady with her two small children eating a meal, the only patrons. He greeted the cashier and ordered his usual, a barbecue burger, french fries and a soda. Minutes later, just as the cashier came out to bring him his lunch, he suddenly heard a loud banging noise. Startled, he turned around to see the young woman furiously slapping her hand against the table, leaning over it, grasping wildly at her children’s clothing. Her children were crying, grabbing at her, terrified. Her back was to the counter, so it took Dr. Marshall longer than it should’ve to realize what was happening. The woman was choking. He quickly walked over to her and applied the Heimlich maneuver. It took a couple of tries, but eventually worked. He reached into his pocket to call an ambulance, forgetting he’d lost his mobile phone a few days earlier. Fortunately the cashier had already called 911. Although the woman seemed to be breathing normally again, Dr. Marshall stayed to make certain she was okay as the ambulance arrived. Looking at the clock over the restaurant exit, however, he noticed he’d lost track of time. Somehow, it was already close to four in the afternoon. Ignoring his lunch, he quickly extracted himself from the commotion at the restaurant and returned to the office to find the front door open.

  Readying himself for anything, he took a few steps inside to see the familiar profile and near waist-length hair of Kate Minon. She was standing at the threshold of the small office where Dr. Marshall had witnessed the first images from the Vela system two years earlier. She seemed unusually still and her face was strangely lit from something within the room. Though he could’ve sworn he’d set the screen-saver, Dr. Marshall surmised that it was probably the high-definition monitor on the wall. He approached her, gently calling her name and apologizing for being late. She turned towards him, her eyes dreamy, smiled and apologized in turn for letting herself in. That was when he saw the object of her fascination. He’d kept the field detector prototype on a desk in the office as a memento, and at that moment it was whirling with an intensity he’d never seen before. Every single particle within the globe seemed to be alight, illuminating most of the small office. Lost in the consequences of what’d just happened, Dr. Marshall explained that it was a keepsake from a project he’d been working on. Kate Minon looked at him, smiled again, nodded and handed him a folder with the proposed readings. She then explained that she had a flight to catch, said goodbye and walked out the door. After she left, Dr. Marshall noticed the globe had dimmed to its usual level of activity, once again darkening the room.

  Dr. Minon

  Kate Minon was running late. It was 3:15pm and her flight was scheduled to leave LAX early that evening. Even though it was a Saturday, she didn’t want to risk it and had budgeted over three hours to drive to Los Angeles to get on her plane. Her family had roots in Western Europe and since it was the start of a new year, it was time for the French Minons and British Minons to hold their annual reunion. In 2009, it was the French Minons’ turn to host the week-long festivities, which would be in Marseille. She’d been late to the winter gathering once before and didn’t want a repeat.

  Kate Minon was born in Cambridge, England where her father taught physics at the university. When he accepted a position at Harvey Mudd College in California, the family moved to Claremont. She was already sixteen years old at the time, so she never lost her British accent. From the start, her family loved California; and it was during her freshman year at Pomona College when she discovered her own passion for physics. After seeking advice from her father, Pomona College faculty and alumni, she enrolled at UC Santa Barbara four years later to begin her doctorate. It was there where she took a seminar on quantum mechanics taught by Professor Marshall, who went on to be her dissertation advisor. When he mentioned in November that he needed a teaching assistant for an upcoming seminar on string theory, Kate Minon naturally volunteered. As a result, she had to drop off her proposed reading assignments for the class before her flight to Marseille.

  Driving along Pacific Coast Highway, it slightly amused her to think of Dr. Marshall working in a corporate office because it didn’t suit him at all. He actually reminded her a lot of her own father, which could’ve been why she’d asked him to be her advisor and why they’d gotten along so well. She liked Professor Marshall and didn’t want to start the new term leaving him in a lurch. Consequently, the Xerox’s o
f reading assignments sitting in her car seemed to weigh far more than the dozen or so sheets of paper that they actually were. Once she dropped them off, she’d be able to continue on to the airport relatively worry-free.

  Unfortunately, she’d been dealt a setback earlier that morning when she learned that her boyfriend had lost his airline tickets and probably wouldn’t make the flight. They’d had an argument a couple of days earlier and this was like adding insult to injury. Also, she’d stayed on the phone with him longer than she should’ve and was therefore running about ten minutes late. Other than that, however, life was quite good. Her research and dissertation were going well. It turned out she’d started her PhD just in time: Professor Marshall announced he’d be retiring the following year, which cast a pall over the university. It wasn’t an exaggeration to call it the end of an era. Although the circumstances certainly could’ve been better, she was set to graduate from the physics program of her dreams in the spring; and had even begun receiving very discreet intimations concerning how she’d feel about teaching there. Life was good.