The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “Star Gate had a simple premise... wormholes between Star Gates. I don’t get the impression that’s what you’re doing.”

  Kris sighed. “All we know is that we produce a means to go from here to there -- wherever there is. We have no idea. No one has a clue yet how it works.”

  “I saw something the other day on the Discovery Channel. Ninety-nine percent of the matter in the universe is plasma.”

  Kris frowned, trying to figure out how that could be. Shorty saw her puzzlement and supplied the answer. “The stuff of stars, Kris -- and most everything in between them. Stars are dense concentrations of plasma -- interstellar space isn’t -- but it still consists of a lot of plasma.”

  Kris paled. Stars? The vacuum of space? That didn’t sound very appetizing!

  Abe nodded. “Yeah, and bad as that is, I’m a lot older than you guys. My father is older still. He loves science fiction. When I was a kid, I read a science fiction story in one of his old magazines about someone who opened a wormhole or some such -- into the depths of space. Pure vacuum.” He made a vulgar sucking sound.

  “Our atmosphere was being sucking into it. Some clever guy figured a way to clap a steel shell around it and after that had a transportable, very hard vacuum chamber. You really should prepare for worst cases, even if your experience has been otherwise.”

  “What, you don’t think one Star Gate connection is representative of the universe?” Kris exclaimed.

  Abe waved at the machine. “This wasn’t very hard to figure out.”

  Kris smiled. “Yeah, but you didn’t hear about the other feature of this. This is a fusion power generator. It also produces a lot of electricity.”

  “Fusion?” Abe asked cautiously.

  “Yes. No radiation, no chance of failure, perfect power,” Kris informed him.

  The older man whistled. “That’s going to make you a lot of friends -- and more than a few enemies.”

  “That part is complicated,” Kris admitted.

  The two men went back to work a little later, and at eight o’clock the three left with the vacuum pump chugging away. Abe went to his car while Kris stayed talking to Shorty. “Andie is going to be ecstatic about this.”

  He nodded. “How is she getting along with Linda?”

  “It’s Linda this, Linda that,” Kris told him. “She likes her, which is something for Andie, as she doesn’t usually take to people quickly.”

  He looked up at the few stars visible in the evening in LA. “What?” Kris asked.

  “It’s not my business, okay?”

  “What isn’t your business?”

  “Linda is gay.”

  Kris laughed. “So?”

  “So, right now she’s between lovers.”

  Kris laughed harder. “Andie’s always between lovers. She is too smart, too focused, and too weird to do well with others.”

  “You two aren’t...” his voice trailed away.

  “No. We’re friends, very good friends, but Andie has her tastes and I have mine. We’re not that kind of friends if you get my drift.”

  “Sorry,” he apologized.

  “No problem. Andie and I have been friends forever. We will be friends forever. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her and nothing she wouldn’t do for me. But... not that.”

  “Like I said, I’m sorry.”

  “And like I’m trying to hint, don’t be. Andie alternates between a high libido and none at all -- it’s one of her character flaws. Ask her and she’ll tell you all about it.”

  Shorty laughed. “I guess I grew up at the wrong time. We never talked about this sort of thing. Not really.”

  Kris shrugged and eventually left and reported on progress, not personal items, to Andie.

  “It’s done? The pump is running?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is so cool! Linda and I will be there early tomorrow.”

  “Shorty had some good ideas; Abe the gaffer had some scary ideas,” Kris told her.

  She listened raptly and when Kris was done faced, up to the problem directly. “I’d like to say it’s not a problem. Based on n equals one? I don’t think so! No, he’s right. Tomorrow, Linda and I will go over instrumentation that we’ll need and get it on order. Shorty is right and I’ve been stupid again.”

  “You’ve been optimistic,” Kris told her. “Relax.”

  Kris went on and explained his idea about a control panel.

  “Yeah, Linda was talking about that as well. This is really more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than I realized. We need better instrumentation and protection! Lots and lots of protection!”

  Kris laughed and later collapsed wearily into bed.

  Wednesday morning was one long skull-busting session with everyone present. Kit showed up, as did Ezra, and they ran over a million ideas and how they could defend against them and what sort of instrumentation they’d need.

  The early afternoon was spent ordering equipment they couldn’t go and fetch, and Kris, Shorty and Abe going to fetch it if they could.

  Thursday was Shorty, Linda, Kit, and Andie working on the control panel for Poppa Two and instrumentation for the machine. Kris kept copious notes and that evening spent her time pouring over diagrams of the equipment, making the changes to them, and then emailing them to Andie.

  They did a first test of Fox Two on Friday morning, an all-hands affair. The instruments were all checked and verified, and then Andie tried to create another door. Everyone waited with baited breath. It fluttered in the wind, stalled and faded from sight.

  Nothing that they changed made it stay.

  About four in the afternoon, Andie called a halt. “Tomorrow, Kris and I become high school graduates. I’m giving the victory speech.”

  “Valedictory speech,” Kris corrected.

  “You have your spelling and I have mine,” Andie told her. “I’m the one with the higher GPA. You figure out who is more likely to be right!

  “I have met the demon that was high school and vanquished it.” She waved at the recalcitrant fusor. “I will meet this demon as well and conquer it as well. Piece of cake!

  “That said, I’m going home and practice my speech. Kris can go home and contemplate what she’s going to wear. Me, I chose what I was going to wear, long ago.

  “Tomorrow at nine am, we’ll reassemble. We will make a few more changes in this and that, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll get rid of the control panel first, and if it still doesn’t work, then the instrumentation. Again, at 4 pm we will adjourn. Sunday, nine am once more, no matter what.”

  Later, Kris was sitting on Andie’s bed, while her friend was updating plans and diagrams -- in this case going back to what they had before.

  “This is a pisser,” Andie told Kris when she finished.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Think about it, overnight.”

  “I will, but to be honest, I haven’t a clue.”

  “Neither do I. Tomorrow is another day, Kris.

  Except nothing came to Kris and when they met, the changes the others proposed were more or less trivial and didn’t work. Andie pulled out the control circuits and right after lunch they tried again. And still nothing happened. There was no change in the result.

  The next plan was to pull out the instruments that would warn of a hostile environment. Andie had been adamant that air could cross the door, so there had to be a crash shutoff and that was in place, plus radiation counters that would scream a warning and cut off the machine as well.

  Andie was studying the plans and looked up. “I have another idea. A better idea. There is a simple parameter we can easily change.”

  She had them pull the plugs, then slid the four by eight sheet of plywood eight feet to the next plug set and hooked up again.

  They had to move other gear as well, so it was a little before three before they were ready to try again.

  This time, the results were as different as the first two times. The blue shape shimmered and almost at once was ripped aw
ay. Wind howled, and Kris found herself being dragged inexorably towards what was now a solid black rectangle. The right instrument reacted, and the hurricane vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  Everyone was shaken, except Andie, who had been closest, but had the best grip of anyone on one of the supports for the fusor chamber.

  “Not that one,” Andie said, trying to sound humorous. “We are, though, getting closer. Tomorrow, we’ll try again.”

  * * *

  Graduation was boring and worse, Andie didn’t use the fish line in her speech. “I’m trying not to call attention to myself,” she told Kris afterwards. Kris nodded, but didn’t believe her.

  Andie’s father was there, and that was the saddest thing. Kris could remember how he’d looked a few days before. Now he looked drawn and pale and had lost weight.

  Then Linda came up and hugged Andie, putting a smile on Kris’s face as she saw her mother’s look of distaste and her father’s look of amusement.

  Her father had smiled and then later pulled Kris into a corner of the auditorium, away from where people were celebrating.

  “I want you to know that I support you, okay?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “You can go to Caltech or not, as you wish. Until a week before school starts next fall, there’s a minimal cancellation fee for the tuition. In fact, there’s no penalty for paying it at the time. I’ve already paid, but it’s not a big deal, Kris. Do whatever you think best.”

  Kris studied him evenly. “You’re not hoping I mess up and have to slink away, my tail between my legs?”

  “Kris, I’m praying that you and Andie make this a huge success. Or a little success. This is who you are, dear Kris. Don’t let it go to your head, but don’t shirk, either.”

  They went out to eat afterwards, to a private room in the Beverly Wilshire, one of the ritziest hotels in LA. Before Kris hit the sheets that night, she was emotionally exhausted.

  Still, the next morning arrived right on time, and Kris dragged herself to the studio, knowing that a movie crew would have been there four or five hours earlier.

  They moved the machine another eight feet, and this time the blue rectangle did as it had before at Andie’s house. However, probing revealed no way forward... whatever was on the other side of the door seemed to be solid rock.

  Twice more they moved it, and both times the door failed to form.

  Monday morning, the first time they tried, it formed a stable rectangle again. It was Kris who sounded a caution when she approached the entrance. While Andie was ready to shut the machine off, Kris held an thermometer towards the blue door.

  Two feet away from the blue door, the temperature registered sixty degrees centigrade, and so they reluctantly turned it off.

  “There was an atmosphere,” Linda reminded them. “And it had to be a density similar to our own, heat or not.”

  “Maybe,” Andie told her. “But it’s still too damn hot.”

  Four more moves and the machine was about eight feet to the east of where it had started. Another stable blue rectangle formed and almost at once, water started pouring into the sound stage. That wasn’t something they’d prepared for and again Andie cut the power. Andie was getting very good at that.

  This time, Andie stalked up to the machine and used a crow bar to lever the entire apparatus forward about six inches. Again there was no blue rectangle.

  Andie reacted by trying it after moving the machine two inches.

  This time there was once again a stable rectangle. Air didn’t flow in or out; there was no gushing water. A temperature probe reported that the air temperature on the other side was twenty-eight degrees centigrade, which was quite nice.

  Kris had long since prepared a light bar with the XL-2 attached and walked up to the rectangle and shoved it through. After two minutes, she pulled it back and everyone clustered around the tiny screen of the camera.

  “Wonderful!” Andie said when they had all had time to recognize the picture. It was about twenty feet above a body of water that stretched as far as the eye could see. There was no way to “see” in the other direction, but Kris privately thought that there probably weren’t many places on Earth’s oceans were you were close enough to land to see it.

  “Tomorrow,” Andie announced after the last disappointment, “I’m going to add the instruments to the Far Side door at my house, and then we’ll try it there again. For now, I think, I’ll forgo the luxury of an all-in-one control panel. If we can establish a secure connection, we’ll move supplies through as quickly as we can for a period of one hour. Then I’ll shut it down and examine the equipment. Unfortunately, that means letting air into the vacuum chamber again, which means that we won’t be able to try again until Wednesday.

  “Tomorrow afternoon, Art and Lin will finally start on their machines with the rest of us helping out as needed. Tomorrow morning though, we are all going to have to hump supplies at my place. We’ll try exploring through the door at my place early Wednesday, and no matter what, wind up after an hour. That will be Kris and Ezra, with Linda and Kit backing them up there. Shorty and I will be here to help Art and Lin. In the afternoon we’ll switch off -- Kris and Shorty will help Art, while Linda and I will work with Lin Xi to get things underway with their machines. Wednesday evening, I’ll make a decision about how we want to further explore.

  “Does anyone have any ideas we haven’t already broached?”

  Since there had already been a lot of ideas submitted, there were just headshakes. It had been a long day, filled with myriad disappointments. They needed to recharge, Kris thought. She and Andie spent only a half hour going over lists and things for the next days, then Andie went to order some Chinese takeout while Kris drove home.

  She didn’t feel much like talking to her father, but knowing that they were spending a lot of money, she talked with him anyway, not trying to minimize their lack of success.

  He seemed more cheerful about their lack of progress than Kris was. “You have a range of results, ranging from a cave to a couple of oceans.”

  “The water that came in was fresh,” she told him. “It was only coming through from the lower third of the door.”

  “Okay,” he said, nodding. “But so far you’ve not found any really hostile environments.”

  Kris grimaced. “We found one that we think was a vacuum, and another that was very warm, more than 140 degrees Fahrenheit. We also found one that evidently opened in solid rock. On top of that, while the water wasn’t deep, it still came in pretty fast, but we’ve got a switch now where Andie can cut off the machine almost at once -- and Linda is working on more instrumentation that will do the same thing -- the trick will be deciding what all we might face.”

  “It sounds like progress, even if it doesn’t look like it to you.”

  “I guess,” she replied.

  The next morning, they were all at Andie’s house early. “I’ve checked Shorty’s apparatus, and I can’t find anything wrong with it. I’ve checked this machine as well, and it’s in good shape. Which isn’t to say there might not be something I missed. I’m reasonably confident I can build a replacement, even if this one breaks. I have enough parts now to build a couple from scratch, and it would only take a day or so. I’d start with the fusor chamber and then the vacuum pump, so I could parallel some of the work while the chamber is being pumped down to vacuum.

  “There are seven of us who’ll do the work. Ezra, you’re on the cutoff switch on the machine. while the rest of us will make a human chain to pass things through the Far Side door. Kris will be on this side, at the door, and I’ll be on the other side. We’ll need two others on this side and three on the Far Side with me.

  “It’s my thought that we could swap after the food goes through with someone getting stuck with me on the other side. You all can decide how you want to do it. Personally, I think the risk in minimal -- but that’s just me.”

  Linda volunteered to be on the Far Side with Andie, and so did Shorty and
Lin Xi, so Kris got Art and Kit to help her. The machine was turned on after the pallet of food had been moved into the hallway, and at once they were moving things.

  It went, Kris thought, smoothly. The first thing they’d done was pass the empty wooden pallet through for a place to put the rations on the other side and then they started passing the cases of rations. There were only forty-eight cases on the pallet, and they moved them quickly, taking twenty minutes or so.

  Then they brought in the water containers. Again, the pallet went first, but Andie had them stacking only one layer of the plastic containers on the pallet and another layer on top of the cases of emergency rations. It took a little longer, but not much.

  They spent another ten minutes moving a half dozen boxes with things like lanterns, tents, sleeping bags, cooking gear and the like, and then the machine was shut down, and they all went into the dining room where Andie had pizza ordered in.

  In the afternoon, Kris went with Art and Kit to Art’s sound stage, while Andie and Linda went with Lin Xi. After two hours, Andie came over and looked at what Art was doing.

  After a few minutes, Andie spoke up. “You have to know, I’m not your biggest fan, Art.”

  “So what? For a chance to work on this, I’ll grin and bear it.”

  “Yeah, well, the problem is the benchmarks set by the others. The other day, Shorty put his together in a day, and it was more complicated, at least a little, installation than this one. Lin Xi is much further along as well.”

  “Not everyone works at the same pace,” Kit told her, trying, Kris thought, to defend his friend.

  “Yeah, fine. But not half as fast, which is what Art’s doing.”

  “I’m being careful,” Art said, his voice nasty. “If I go faster, I could screw up.”

  “So, screw up,” Andie came right back. “I’ve screwed up. Big deal. We fix it and go on.” She turned to Kris. “I wasn’t going to use Abe; he’s been working with Shorty who is checking things on Fox Two. Abe can come over and give you guys a hand. He helped Shorty get his up and running.”

  “I’m fine,” Art told her. “I don’t need any more help. Whoever it is would only be in the way. I’m not going to rush this -- I want to understand what it is that I’m doing. This isn’t an erector set.”