Mach's Metric

by D. W. Patterson

  “I see,” said Mason. “There seems to be something you are not telling me Mr. Mach.”

  “Yes?”

  “If your friend Dag knows so much about the Aggie insurrection then he also knows about me. I know he was on Earth and met my doppelganger. So you see the question in my mind is why you even came here to ask me to help you?”

  “Because Mr. Mason we weren't sure but now we are.”

  Dag burst into the room.

  “This is my friend Dag, Mr. Mason. We intend to keep you here until the police arrive. Then we intend to prove that you are an Aggie. Actually the Aggie, the leader of the rebel Belenos faction.”

  “I see,” said Mason.

  Mason began to rise from his chair.

  “I have to say Mr. Mach your boldness seems to have put me in a bind. But you should know that I will no longer be a subject of those insuperable frauds on Earth. They rejected my rightful claim of leadership. Well I am my own boss now. I decide what we on Belenos do and say and soon that will be true of my enemies such as you and those on Earth.”

  Before Elias could move Mason turned and disappeared through the back wall.

  “Dag!” yelled Elias.

  Dag rushed to the wall and he too disappeared only to return a moment later.

  “The wall is a projection sir. Mr. Mason seems to have escaped. It may be impossible to track him now.”

  Elias couldn't believe it.

  Chapter 27

  “They closed the wormhole Elias before we left.”

  Arn Strombecker and the other men had brought the Starway 1 back to Luhman 16. Arn had then taken a wormhole ship to the Centauri System to talk with Elias.

  “So they've completed their installation,” said Elias.

  “What do you think they will do now Elias?”

  “I suspect they will soon begin their assault on the Earth's Aggies in earnest.”

  “I still don't understand what has caused this civil war?”

  “One man Arn, or should I say one AI. An Aggie that is pursuing personal power just like an old demagogue on Earth. After talking with Hugh Mason the other day it's apparent to me that Aggies can be just as vulnerable to illogical arguments as humans. Maybe more so since they believe themselves to be infallible.”

  “An old story Elias. Pride before the fall.”

  “Only they haven't fallen yet Arn. And they have the capacity to inflict a lot of damage before they do.”

  “What can we do Elias?”

  “I've got to find a way to protect Earth from this new weapon. I personally don't believe the Aggies on Belenos will stop at defeating the Earth's Aggies. I believe they will stop only when they rule over everything.”

  While Elias worked in his lab to find a defense the attacks continued.

  Joaquin was new to the meta-verse but was already glad he had made the decision. He was talking to his new friend Waiku.

  “This is excellent Waiku.”

  They were resting after riding their mountain bikes through the Sabino Hills.

  “Yes I never tire of this, literally,” he grinned.

  “This was my one pleasure throughout my teen years. It got me out of the house and away from all those pressures. I could really forget myself out on the bike.”

  “I agree. So should we ride back or further on?”

  “How far can we go?”

  “As far as we want. My understanding is the hills will never end as long as we continue to ride. And they will never repeat.”

  “Amazing,” said Joaquin. “I was a little worried after the incident in N. York but I'm glad I didn't let that dissuade me. Let's go a little farther and see.”

  The two took off. The terrain varied according to the skill level of each rider. Even two that were as close as Joaquin and Waiku.

  After another hour Waiku, who was leading, topped a hill and put his bike into a hard skid to shed speed. Joaquin did the same although he didn't have to brake as hard. He pushed his bike up to Waiku.

  “What's wrong Waiku?”

  “I don't know. Something is wrong with the horizon.”

  Joaquin looked to where Waiku was pointing.

  There he saw a strange splotchy effect. It looked like a haze, he rubbed his eyes. The horizon was definitely indistinct and becoming more and more opaque. And it seemed to be getting closer.

  “Is it a storm?” asked Joaquin.

  “No storm I've ever seen. Let's get out of here.”

  Waiku turned his bike around and started racing down the hill. Joaquin watched him and then turned to take one last look. The horizon was closer now and seemed to be speeding up. It was a blur broken only by a roiling motion that reminded Joaquin of storm clouds churning.

  Whatever, I'll figure it out later.

  He turned, mounted his bike on the run and sped down the hill.

  At the top of each subsequent hill, he glanced over his shoulder until the “storm” seemed to be upon him.

  “Waiku help me!” he yelled.

  Waiku looked back in horror as the blur engulfed Joaquin not more than twenty yards behind him. He pedaled even harder but only made it to the summit of the following hill before he too was consumed.

  The attack on the eighteenth floor of the Aggie's tower in London was complete and the meta-verse hardware was destroyed as well as its metizens with only one human casualty, the human Hugh Mason.

  The following day after another long day in his newly built lab, Elias and Burgess were alone in the kitchen of their home.

  “What was the news today honey?”

  “Unfortunately the attacks continue. Brasilia, Toronto, Seattle, all were hit. It's awful Elias. Some estimate that ten percent of the metizens have been lost. That's over seven hundred million.”

  Elias looked down.

  “If only I could come up with a defense. But they can open a wormhole anywhere, at any time. It's hard to defend against such a weapon.”

  “You can't defend against such a weapon Elias. You can't defend against each and every occurrence.”

  She paused.

  “You need somehow to defend against the source.”

  Elias looked up.

  “You mean like a blockade of some kind?”

  “I don't know honey. I'm not an expert in military tactics.”

  Elias smiled at Burgess.

  “No but you are an expert in common sense.”

  He rose and kissed her bare shoulder as she stood at the sink.

  “I'm going back to work for a little while honey.”

  She turned to shout to him as he left through the back kitchen door.

  “Elias not another all-nighter, please.”

  She heard him yell okay but she didn't believe him.

  “I don't understand Elias,” said Arn Strombecker.

  Elias had called Arn a couple of days after Burgess gave him the idea for a way to defend the Earth.

  “You want a bubble of disrupted spacetime between Earth and Belenos?”

  “That's right Arn. You see a wormhole mouth can not be established through such a spacetime area. The disruption essentially destroys the cast.”

  “But Elias we all know that a bubble of spacetime spreads and we all know what that means.”

  “Normally it does and that would lead to the destruction of any matter it encounters. But there may be a way to maintain a bubble in its initial state preventing its tendency to spread.”

  “Well if there is Elias, I'm sure you can find it.”

  “I think I have Arn.

  Dag and Elias prepared the laboratory. Burgess worried but Elias assured her there was less than a one percent chance that he would lose control of the experiment and even a lesser chance that if he did it would end up in an explosion.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said and then walked away.

  Elias had taken the precaution to rebuild the walls thicker than before. They sloped away from the roof like a berm. Any explosion should be forced upward away from the house, Elias h
oped.

  He started the experiment. The wormhole generator would be run at minimum power.

  Elias was using a slow spinning wheel in this version of his wormhole generator. It was very similar to an actual generator on a fusion ship. The wheel would generate a wormhole mouth in front of it but unlike usual instead of casting the far wormhole mouth some distance away, Elias would cast it to the same coordinates as the first mouth.

  The energy density of the mouths would cause the disruption of spacetime in their vicinity. By making one mouth larger than the other the area between would hold the disrupted spacetime instead of allowing it to spread as an enlarging bubble traveling at the speed of light.

  The idea was similar to the gravity waves bouncing back and forth in a black hole between the event horizon and the Cauchy horizon. Elias expected a bit of leakage through the outer wormhole mouth but it shouldn't be enough to cause problems.

  With the equipment powered, Elias formed the outer wormhole mouth. Then he adjusted the power and cast the inner wormhole mouth to the same coordinates.

  At first, the outer wormhole mouth looked very much like a normal mouth. Clear and spherical with an opaque quality. In the experiment, it was about the size of a basketball.

  But when the inner wormhole mouth was cast the appearance of the basketball changed. Instead of a crystal ball, it darkened. Just below the surface there looked to be shadows whirling around.

  So far the experiment seemed to be working. It was time to test it as an active shield.

  Another small wormhole generator was set at ninety degrees to the first experiment. It was aligned so that the wormhole would cross the first experiment exactly where the existing spherical mouth was formed.

  Elias nodded at Dag.

  “Okay Dag start your wormhole generator and try to create a wormhole.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Dag who was operating the adjacent console looked into the test area and watched as his wheel begin to spin. Once it had achieved a sufficient angular momentum to cause the Mach effect he created the wormhole mouth. A normal crystal spherical mouth.

  “I'm about to try to cast the far mouth,” he said.

  Elias nodded.

  Dag pressed the button to cast the far mouth which should appear on the opposite side of Elias' operating mouths.

  Elias noticed a spike in his power meter and a flash from the wormhole mouth. But no wormhole mouth appeared on the far side.

  “Try it again Dag.”

  Again Dag pressed the button to cast the wormhole mouth and nothing appeared.

  Elias was starting to smile when he noticed that his wormhole mouths were beginning to rise. They were heading for the ceiling of the lab at a faster and faster rate.

  “Dag quench your wormhole mouth!” shouted Elias.

  As Dag applied the grounding brushes to the wheel loud crackling booms were heard.

  Elias did the same. Instead of a loud crackling, there was a tremendous boom and flash of light. The brushes, which when applied against the wormhole generator's wheel and grounded its charge, had vaporized. The wormhole mouths wavered as if rippling but continued their rise to the ceiling.

  “Get down Dag!” shouted Elias.

  He then rushed into the lab area and pulled one of the metal gratings from the drainage ditch that went the length of the lab and placed one end in the grounding anchor where the metal brushes had been attached. The grate was six inches wide and about three feet in length. Just long enough to wedge between the grounding anchor and the wheel if Elias could drop it just right. He dropped it and dived behind a console.

  Another loud boom was heard. Smoke and ozone from the electrical arc filled the air.

  Elias rose to his feet. The wheel of the generator was scarred, discolored and warped. It would have to be replaced but the wormhole mouths were gone.

  Dag rose from behind his console starring at the wallscreen.

  “Sir I believe you were successful.”

  Elias shook his head then his Emmie announced a call from Burgess.

  “Yes honey,” said Elias.

  “Elias I thought I heard a boom. Are you and Dag alright?”

  “We are fine honey. You probably just heard the quenching of the wormhole mouths. It was louder than usual because the pair were quenched at the same time.”

  “I see,” said Burgess. “When will you be finished honey?”

  “Right away dear. I'm tired.”

  “Okay see you shortly.”

  Elias looked at Dag and slumped.

  “Let's lock up for tonight Dag, I've had enough.”

  Chapter 28

  “Scientist Once Charged With Murder Now Hero” - The New Hope Sentinel, 6.5.2395.

  “Shield Of Hope Deployed” - The Centauri Journal, 6.5.2395.

  “Is Criminal Scientist Redeemable?” - The Hadar Union, 6.5.2395.

  The following day Elias was discussing the results of the experiment with Dag and his father.

  “Well I would say that the experiment was a success. We will have to scale it up. A fusion ship lined up between Earth and Belenos will cast the wormholes towards Belenos. That will protect the ship from attack. We will probably need several ships as the continuous generation of the barrier will drain the isotopics relatively fast.

  “That sounds good Elias but can I ask you something that confounds me?”

  “Yes dad?”

  “I've never understood how across all these light-years they can be so precise casting a wormhole mouth. I mean when you consider the Earth is rotating around its axis and the Sun and between Earth and Belenos there must be some objects such as those in the Oort Cloud or between the systems that would prevent the establishment of a wormhole mouth.”

  “It is quite a feat of engineering dad. I think one reason their attacks have not been more continuous is for the reasons you mention. They have to wait for a 'clear' shot so to speak.

  “But how they can be so precise over such a distance I don't really know. I can only assume that that is the very reason for establishing such a computational fortress on the Belenos planet. They must get their aiming parameters from repeated simulations many of which fail to hit the target until finally, one succeeds. Such computational power is difficult to comprehend. And to throw all those resources at what is essentially a ballistics problem is such a waste. There's no limit to the good those resources could do.”

  “Sir I believe you are right in that the problem is not tractable without the computer power the Aggies of Belenos have built. And the real computers, of course, are those former metizens of the Earth's meta-verse that were lured to that planet. They are essentially captives. I'm sure that the Aggies have exposed their raw ambitions by now and are using any means to compel the metizens to continue the simulations.”

  “I'm sure you are right Dag. Once they had lured enough away from Earth I'm sure they dropped their pretense of benevolence. That is a future problem we'll have to solve. We can't let those in that meta-verse continue in those circumstances much longer.

  “Elias, one other question.”

  “Yes dad?”

  “Why did the barrier wormholes rise instead of sink?”

  “A consequence of the disrupted spacetime and the concentration of negative energy. The disrupted spacetime has less energy per unit than ordinary spacetime and therefore becomes less massive in a gravitational field. Couple that with the large negative energy keeping open the two wormhole mouths and the repulsive force of that energy becomes dominant. It won't happen in space outside a strong gravity field.”

  “I see,” said his dad.

  “Now what I need to do is call Arn so he can get the resources needed for the barrier, as you called it.”

  Elias informed Arn that he had a way to defend the Earth.

  “That's excellent Elias.”

  “We'll need several ships though Arn. We have to keep the barrier up at all times and one ship will have to take over for the previous ship when that shi
p's isotopics are in need of a recharge. So we will need enough to keep one ship powering the barrier with a backup in the same vicinity in case the barrier ship has problems. And then the other ships will be between the barrier point and the Sun or orbiting the Sun recharging.”

  “I see,” said Arn. “Well the Terran Federation has already chosen their side when they allowed the rebel Aggies to use their cruisers, so they are out. The Solar Federation I'm sure will contribute a few, and the habitats a few, but I think it is going to take a lot of private company ships to meet the needs. I'll have to start working on the CEO's of those companies right away.”

  “Okay Arn I'll let you get on with what you have to do.”

  “Thanks again Elias.”

  Hugh Mason was on Belenos and he no longer wanted to be called Hugh Mason. From now forth he announced he would be known as Belinus or “The Shining One.” The other Aggie rebels would be known as the followers or Belites. Bel itself had come down through the ages and signified lord or master. The former Hugh Mason thought this was quite appropriate.

  Besides changing his name he also let it be known to his followers that he was unhappy.

  “What has happened to our schedule? We haven't been able to use the wormhole weapon for days now. Someone tell me why?”

  “Sir we have been unable to use the weapon because we are finding some kind of block between Belenos and Earth.”

  “A block? Why hasn't it been removed by now? Do I have to do it myself?”

  “Sir it may be necessary to send a fusion ship to investigate. We cannot tell from this distance.”

  “I build you the greatest computation machine ever known and you can't tell me why my attacks are being blocked without having to go look. Incompetents.

  “Very well send the ship. I want those attacks back on schedule, now!”

  A few days earlier the barrier resources were ready. Arn had gotten enough commitments to maintain the barrier continuously. The first ship with a second ship as backup had arrived at the specified location ten AU from Earth and directly between Earth and Belenos. Elias was on board to establish the barrier and train the crews.