Away Saga

by Norman Oro

  Considering how personal the potential connection was between human experience and Allen field activity, Dr. Marshall doubted whether she’d want to shed light on any of the telemetry within that context. In fact, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she refused. However, being who she was and given her keen interest in furthering their research, she agreed to give whatever information she could. In fact, looking back, Dr. Minon explained that she often wondered herself whether there was a relationship between her emotional states and what the Vela system had detected. Going through the times and locations of each of the teleportation events seemed to confirm that intuition. One event about three years earlier was preceded by some good-natured, though vigorous, ribbing she’d taken from her relatives for being late to a family gathering; another event one year after that happened around the time she had an argument with her boyfriend, who didn’t want to attend that year’s family reunion, and so on. Though most of the probable instances of teleportation occurred while she slept, at least a couple were triggered while she was awake. Dr. Marshall was no psychiatrist; however, it seemed as though it was just on the verge of being willful, of being something Professor Minon could control.

  As the pace of their research into ambient field activity quickened, the satellite detector network that enabled much of it was at last completed. Vela 4B’s launch in June 2011 marked the realization of the worldwide Allen field monitoring system that Dr. Gidsen had originally envisioned some fifty-two years earlier. Watching the newest telemetry on a large high-definition display, Dr. Marshall was more certain than ever that US-395’s resolution was at hand. The only thing he could see contending with to reach it wasn’t a doppelganger like Applied Sciences. Plain and simple, he believed their true adversary would be time.

  It was this lack of time that nudged him into a course of action that he wouldn’t have otherwise considered. Calling Guy Pool a few days into 2012, he proposed bringing the US-395 chamber into Dr. Minon’s “dream set” for lack of a better term. Dr. Marshall hypothesized that if the chamber could become one of those places that saw an up-tick in Allen field activity as Professor Minon slept, they might be able to execute their contingency plan by somehow timing it around a teleportation event. Because the increases in activity were so ephemeral, lasting no more than a few seconds at most, and usually fell short of the 0.7 threshold for effecting teleportation, he’d been thinking about creating a field amplifier. Conceptually, it wouldn’t be much different from a generator; and would therefore be fairly easy for him to build. Rather than requiring a power source in the 150 megawatt range, though, it could piggy-back off the naturally occurring field activity that Dr. Minon was somehow able to influence. As a result, he estimated that the energy available from an everyday wall socket could be enough to power it. In light of his agreement with the government, he’d held off for years on building an amplifier because of its similarity to a field generator. However, he felt the agreement didn’t preclude an untested prototype. If they could get an amplifier in front of the government and demonstrate the Highway 1 technology within the context of the contingency plan, Dr. Marshall felt they had a good shot at bringing Dr. Rys and his son back without a second generator. Guy Pool agreed and volunteered to take care of getting an audience with the government, as well as evaluating Pueblo’s evacuation.

  Dr. Marshall had initially sought to keep Professor Minon out of US-395, but it seemed that the trajectory of events would make that almost impossible. Although she’d grown to become practically indispensable to successfully resolving the project, his sense of having been her mentor continued to guide his approach as he sought to ensure that the choice to join would be entirely hers. While they were examining field telemetry for the region around Pueblo, he mentioned that many years earlier he’d been on a project that developed technology very similar to what they were working on. Dr. Minon nodded and replied that she remembered him telling her that a couple of years earlier when she’d just started working for him. It was related to the strong pulse of activity Vela always detected out in the desert. Dr. Marshall confirmed it was the same project. He then added that although their work on Highway 1 was an end unto itself, if they succeeded, it stood a good chance of bringing to a close something that he’d been working on for decades, something that was tied to that original project. Emphasizing that she was under no obligation to accept, he then invited Professor Minon to be a part of that effort. She responded by asking when she could begin.

  Dr. Marshall’s subsequent overview of US-395 generated at least a few moments of stunned silence. Walking through it for the first time in years, he had to admit that US-395 was a heck of a thing. Wanting to keep the pressure off, he stopped his overview just short of the day when Dr. Rys and his son were sent. After confirming with Dr. Minon that she wanted to proceed, he told her about his idea to get her to start dreaming about their old facility in Pueblo. He gave her everything he could about it; photographs, journal entries, descriptions, anything that could link her with the chamber. By the time he was finished and had answered her questions, it was early evening. He spent the rest of the night before going home running final diagnostics on a spare terrestrial field detector, one he hadn’t been certain he’d ever deploy. It was for Pueblo.

  The following weekend, they climbed into Dr. Marshall’s F1 pickup truck at six in the morning and headed out to the US-395 project site. It’d been over fifty years since he’d been there; however, he didn’t even need a map. They had good weather; it was crisp and clear the entire way. To help guide his efforts, Dr. Marshall had consulted a sleep researcher about integrating memories into dreams. The advice for the most part was as straightforward as he’d imagined. First, memories would have to be made. After that, they’d need to be reinforced somehow. Of course, there were ethical issues with purposefully manufacturing then reinforcing vivid and intense memories. Even if that were feasible, Dr. Marshall refused to go that route. He simply hoped that knowing what US-395 was and going to the place where it all happened would be enough. Understandably, the story of the project alone made quite an impression on Professor Minon. He hoped that visiting Pueblo would only strengthen that. Speaking with her about it, they agreed to go once a week and spend the day there, so she’d eventually know it as well as he did, so she’d eventually know it so well that Pueblo would be one of those places that lit up at night when she dreamed.

  After the four hour drive to town, the first thing he noticed was that the post office had been boarded up, though the parking lot was still there. And just past that, he saw a sight for sore eyes; Art’s Diner was still there also. It was exactly as he remembered it and he parked nearby. They walked around town for a bit with Dr. Marshall providing narrative about what happened where. Pueblo was slightly more cluttered, but otherwise unchanged. A couple of hours later, they ordered lunch to-go at the diner. He had the meatloaf special and Dr. Minon ordered her usual salad. Eating in the truck, they spent lunch talking about the history of the town within the context of US-395. Dr. Marshall fielded Kate Minon’s questions, doing his best to provide real-life locations that she could relate to the overview and photographs that he’d given to her in Carpinteria. He wanted to give her as many tangibles as possible to increase the odds of Pueblo being integrated into her dreams. Consequently, he did something slightly out of character. After lunch, he took her to the post office and suggested that they try to enter the building. Though it was boarded up, they were surprised to find that the doors were left open. They entered the lobby and headed left towards the stairway that led down to the US-395 auditorium. After descending the long flight of steps, which seemed longer than Dr. Marshall remembered, they were met with a concrete wall. Irrationally, he’d hoped that somehow the wall wouldn’t be there, that with time something had happened and they’d once again be able to enter. At least Professor Minon had pictures of what lay past it. Though it would’ve been better to go inside and walk through the facility, the pictures would have to do.

 
; They spent the rest of the day opening the Field Technologies office in Pueblo. Dr. Marshall had purchased it a year earlier and, like their location in High Wycombe, it was actually more a house than an office. After they arrived, he carefully unloaded the boxes containing the packed detector components from the bed of his truck and wheeled them into the living room. He then worked with Dr. Minon to set up the device. By that point, her proficiency with the field detectors had progressed to equal his own and they made good time, finishing by early evening. They got some dinner afterwards at the diner then began the long drive home.

  Dr. Marshall was in the Carpinteria lab early the next morning to see whether the new ground-based detector had picked up anything. Even at seventy-six years old, he still woke up practically every day excited about going to the lab. After logging into the field monitoring system, he zoomed into Pueblo. Due to the new detector’s sensitivity and location, it was like zooming into a thermographic image of the sun. The Allen field that the Maytag generated was so intense that it overwhelmed everything around it. He applied some filters and the image cleared up immediately to the point where he could see the field activity generated by people strolling along Main Street. He then accessed the detector’s archived telemetry. Fast-forwarding from the time when they returned from Pueblo the night before, he spotted a flash of activity at 2:54am. It was in Art’s Diner of all places. It measured in at 0.4 on the Maytag Index. Though the field wasn’t where it needed to be to execute their fallback plan, he couldn’t help but be pleased. On the night after her very first visit to Pueblo, the town seemed to have found its way into Professor Minon’s dreams.

  Having already achieved encouraging results placing field events, Dr. Marshall quickly turned his attention to amplifying them. After running some numbers, he estimated that a field-strength of 0.4 would be well within what could be amplified to effect teleportation. The obvious question of course was, “To where?” He could’ve magnified that 0.4 field in Art’s Diner, but where it would’ve sent an object was a different matter. Based on his theoretical model, the field at the counterpart location would also need to be amplified for it to work. Running a filter through Field Technologies’ entire system of orbital and ground-based detectors, Dr. Marshall isolated a half-dozen events at the 0.4 level that took place at the same time as the one in the diner. They were all over the world. However, one of them was in High Wycombe. Looking at the archived telemetry from the field detector there, he saw an identical flash of activity right next to the London planetree on Allyn Close. That had to be the other side of the event, its counterpart. After seeing that, he immediately began writing up a list of materials and components he’d need to build two field amplifiers.

  It was around the time of their annual reunion when Dr. Marshall began putting the finishing touches on the amplifier prototypes. Their summer get-together had been cancelled in 2010 and 2011 because it was too soon after Dr. Gidsen’s passing. When it resumed in 2012, they were blessed with good weather; and the event managed to retain its upbeat mood despite their friend’s absence. Guy Pool pulled into the driveway with Piper Finesine that year to see Dr. Marshall’s grandchildren outside playing with a familiar-looking white Labrador retriever. He later learned that Dr. Marshall had found him a month earlier at a shelter in Goleta. Of course, his name was Gitano. He also finally met Professor Minon, a strikingly attractive young woman. About an hour later, everyone was pleasantly surprised to see Congressman Gidsen’s wife, Julia, arrive in good spirits. She was running for her husband’s old seat in the House of Representatives and her election campaign was apparently going quite well. After lunch outside in the bright, cool and clear Carpinteria afternoon, Guy Pool and Dr. Marshall gently pulled themselves away from the gathering and drifted back inside, settling into their usual seats at the kitchen table for their afternoon discussion.

  They started by talking a bit about their families. A few years earlier, Alberto Finesine Pool had joined Alberto Marshall at Pacific Capital and had recently made principal at the firm. Guy Pool recounted how the names apparently got so confusing, though, that his son decided to go by the name “Bert” again, which he hadn’t been called since high school. Dr. Marshall then talked about his daughter Amelia, her ballet studio in Paris and his precocious French grandchildren. After briefly noting how much busier their lives were becoming since they’d retired, they began discussing US-395.

  Guy Pool had looked into what it would take to evacuate Pueblo and it was feasible. Operationally it was feasible. The primary concern, of course, was whether the federal government would take the lead as it should, considering the Department of Commerce ran the project. The worst case scenario would’ve been that the government washed its hands of US-395. They both felt that was exceedingly unlikely; however, in that event, Guy Pool estimated that the potential cost associated with implementing an evacuation without government aid, with coordinating it and compensating a town of roughly nine thousand people for such a disruption in their lives, could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Because of the cost and the obvious problems it’d cause Pueblo’s townspeople, many of whom weren’t even born yet when US-395 was shut down, he personally hoped the government would step up or that they’d find a way around an evacuation altogether. However, following the maxim “Plan for the worst, hope for the best”, he’d begun making arrangements that would allow them to finance one if necessary.

  That left Dr. Marshall’s piece. Like his weekend drives to Pueblo, building the field amplifiers had felt like riding a proverbial bicycle. In a little over five months, he’d built two prototypes with a third one in the works as a backup. He still hadn’t activated them and wouldn’t until they could get an audience with the government. At that, he couldn’t help but note the irony. He was conscientiously abiding by an agreement that the government itself, if asked and not knowing any better, would’ve probably denied even existed. Nevertheless, though he badly wanted to test the prototypes, he’d given his word. Once they’d secured an audience with people who could nullify his decades-old agreement, he’d be able to begin properly field testing and finalizing the devices. Until then, most of the work at Field Technologies would center around the relatively non-technical though equally crucial task of working with Professor Minon to generate a field event within the US-395 auditorium. Remarkably, it seemed as though each visit to Pueblo drew them closer. The first event he’d detected had been in Art’s Diner. Since then, there’d been activity consistently centered at the bottom of the post office stairs, near what used to be the US-395 auditorium entrance. Generating an organic field event within the chamber itself seemed to be only a matter of time.

  Given their progress, Dr. Marshall asked for an estimate as to when they could schedule a presentation regarding Highway 1. Guy Pool responded that Representative Gidsen had made significant progress on that front before he passed away, and had introduced him to some of his colleagues in the House of Representatives and the Senate. He could arrange a meeting with them in early January 2013. After walking them through the project and demonstrating the technology, Guy Pool was confident that by the middle of 2014, they’d be able to speak with a senior White House official who could authorize their contingency plan. Realizing they were perhaps just a couple of years away from completing what in some respects had been a life’s work, they decided to end their discussion earlier than usual that year; and went outside to rejoin their friends and families.

  With an opportunity almost assured to at least present a case that could ultimately result in them resolving US-395, Dr. Marshall focused once again on working with Professor Minon to realize field events within the chamber. Since the project ended in early 1960, he’d been thinking about ways to use particle telemetry to infer the shapes of objects around Allen fields. Of admittedly little practical value at the time, it had started out as a thought experiment to keep his thinking sharp regarding the field theory they’d developed in Pueblo. A very rough analogy would’ve been a kind of
sonar. Instead of sound, though, Allen field particles would generate the relevant “pings”. Being well-versed in how the particles behaved from his days working with Dr. Bishop, Dr. Rys and Dr. Sharp, it’d been his hobby, something that he’d built upon in his journals over the span of fifty-two years. However, with advances in computer technology and his creation of a working field detector, Dr. Marshall decided it was time to turn his thought experiment into a reality. Near the very start of 2012, he’d written up computer program specifications based on how he theorized such a system would work. He then deleted any mention of Allen fields and tasked a small army of computer programmers with creating the imaging software. By early November, a beta version of the program was ready.

  What had started out as an enjoyable thought experiment in 1960 had taken on some importance in 2012. Using telemetry from Pueblo’s land-based field detector, the software was able to generate strikingly realistic three-dimensional images of the auditorium’s present-day interior. The application’s designers were even able to incorporate his specifications regarding how color might be deduced based on Allen particle velocity and refraction. Peering into his laptop’s monitor, Dr. Marshall saw that everything was still there: the chamber, the tent that was draped over it, the lab room, the admin room, the weapons rack, it was all as they’d left it over fifty years earlier. The images themselves had a very soft and indistinct fuzziness to them, a byproduct of how the program extrapolated the characteristics of each object. There also seemed to be instances when the picture dimmed considerably, if only for an instant. Dr. Marshall shrugged it off as probably another idiosyncrasy of the application. Glitches aside, the software wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all. Zooming into the admin room, he could even make out the slide-rule he’d left on his desk and wanted to retrieve just after they’d walled off the auditorium. A few days later, he gave Kate Minon a virtual tour through the facility. He also gave her stories about each of the places within the auditorium, things that perhaps would make them more memorable, more alive in her mind and accessible to her dreams. After that, she spent at least an hour each day at the computer, remotely immersing herself in the facility that Dr. Marshall had once worked in.