The Eons-Lost Orphan

by Laer Carroll

  "That plan is still current. Check back on arrival at take off point."

  "Control, A-10 X-1, roger that."

  When SHE arrived at 7E Begin Point and rotated to a heading down-runway SHE called the tower again and was told to Wait Five. A minute later the tower said OK to roll, A-10 X-1 and Good Luck.

  SHE did not know it but everyone in the tower control room knew about Jane's project. So did much of the base. Many of those who could listen in perked up at the Tower's OK.

  JANE slowly advanced power to her engines, then released the brakes. SHE began to roll.

  A few minutes later HER wheels went soft. As SHE always did SHE waited a few milliseconds then laid back and rose into the sky.

  <>

  The A-10 X-1 flights proceeded without incident all morning. After the first few Jane swapped places with Captain Pickell. LT Ivory continued to monitor all tests but Jane had been asked to meet with the commanders of 66th ASW and 59th TES.

  They met in a conference room at TES. Jane exchanged courtesies with the two majors and was told to sit.

  Both officers congratulated her on her accomplishment. The TES commander asked what her plans were.

  "I'm done here. Tomorrow morning I leave for a few days with my parents then a return to the Academy."

  "Could you be induced to stay for a while?"

  "Not without a very good reason."

  "We need your expertise in exploring this new technology."

  "No you don't. Lieutenant Jessica Ivory, who was instrumental in developing both a technology demonstrator and a tech prototype, understands the theory and practice of telemag technology. She is also an experienced engineer and a leader. I suggest you promote her to captain and the head of the research into the area."

  "That's a bit arrogant," said the head of 66th ASW. "Telling your superior officers what to do."

  For a moment Jane+Robot looked back at them. They saw on HER face what the Marines had seen when SHE went out to fight. It was why they'd nicknamed HER, only half jokingly, The Terminator. Then her face softened as she lapsed back into her normal self.

  "I understand your concerns. Be assured that I will always be available to confer with Lieutenant Ivory, duties at the Academy permitting. If that means coming down here for a weekend, you only need send an aircraft to the Academy. It's only a couple of hours by a bizjet, an hour by fighter."

  For a moment she considered the comic possibilities of an F-22 Raptor setting down at the Academy's modest airfield to pick up, TA DA, a third-year cadet. She did not betray her reaction, however. Her minute as a cyborg had been too useful to let them know she was back to only being human.

  The two officers stood as one. The TES commander said, "That sounds like an excellent strategy, Cadet Kuznetsov. Again, congratulations on your achievement. Have a good time at home and at the Academy."

  They exchanged courtesies and Jane left, the two officers comforted by the return to conventional civilities.

  <>

  After Jane left the two officers sank back in their seats. The 66th said, "Whew. For a minute there I thought she was going to come out of her seat over this table."

  The 59th only nodded.

  Chapter 19 - USAF Academy - Year 3

  Jane's return to the Academy had a surreal feel it, as if she were re-entering a foreign country she'd once lived in years ago. She was once again a lowly cadet, though being in her third year she was no longer so lowly. She wore the required two-tone uniform of light blue shirts and dark blue pants, marched to chow every weekday morning, and was required to yell at newer cadets.

  The first few days helped make her transition. They included room and clothing issuance and class selection. That last was done with the major who was the commander of her new cadet squadron: SQ7 of GP4 or Group 4.

  Jane's schedule resembled that of her previous year: for physical education intramural volleyball, soccer, or basketball as each season occurred. Social sciences with a heavy military slant. Technical Writing and Communication. Advanced engineering in selected subjects.

  The grey-haired older woman said, looking up from an old-fashioned paper folder, "I understand you want to be an astronaut. Perhaps you'd like to take Space Systems Engineering or Rocket Propulsion."

  "For the first semester the first course sounds right. In the second semester Independent Studies in Space subjects. I have some ideas for a radical form of space propulsion."

  "I'd normally think that course is just an excuse for an easy rehash of pop sci ideas. But considering your past achievements I'd not be surprised if you came up with faster-than-light travel."

  "Oh, no, ma'am. I don't plan to invent FTL drives until my fourth year."

  She looked sharply at Jane then smiled. "I'm half-convinced you are serious. With your track record it's almost plausible. But do you really have something realistic for a third-year project?"

  "I do. Over the weekend while I was home and chatting with my father we came up with some ways to increase the efficiency of rockets a lot."

  "I wish you good luck with that. I still have hopes that before I die that a way can be found to put my aging body into orbit."

  <>

  The Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the four groups of ten squadrons of cadets had a talk attended only by the third year cadets. It was in a large auditorium which that day held nearly a thousand cadets.

  "You are now effectively senior-level non-commissioned officers. In the previous two years you were frequently harassed in what may have often seemed like bullying.

  "It was not. It was a carefully administered form of stress designed to prepare you for those cases where you are in combat and may daily be in danger. The idea is that you would become used to constant stress and thus be able to handle it routinely.

  "The 'bullying' likely seemed to be random cruelty. In fact, we have detailed rules about what is permissible and what isn't. You will be monitored and if you break those rules without good cause you will be reprimanded or even expelled. To help you do the right kind of harassment each of our squadrons will give you a short course in this behavior.

  "Good luck, third-year cadets. I expect you to do me proud."

  <>

  Jane was selected the leader of the intramural volleyball team, as she had been her previous two years and thought likely would happen in soccer and basketball when those seasons rolled around.

  She joined the Social Dance Club and taught a weekly course in Argentine tango dancing. Often she had a guest teacher who was visiting the Spring Hills ballroom dance studio to teach tango, usually traveling teachers from Argentina. However the club only included tango in their weekly social dance once a month. Jane went to that event but the rest of the month went to Spring Hills every Saturday tango dance.

  She also joined the Chinese Culture Club which studied Chinese history and present day culture. In the last week of September the Chinese General Secretary for Life was assassinated by one of his body guards who was then killed in a gunfight with the rest of the body guards. This upset many in the club, some of whom suggested it might be part of a revolution. However, no other events happened to support that idea and the club settled down again.

  She found her Military Organization and Leadership Principles course to be useful. Among other lessons she came to understand why most of her intuitive actions made her an effective leader, such as her frequent use of "we" and "us" in conversations.

  She had a problem with her Technical Writing course, earning her first-ever Bs. These were for style. She'd always hated unnecessarily long words, sentences, and paragraphs and stubbornly kept to a lean style of presentation despite her teacher's suggestions she adopt a "more substantial" style. The lessons on organization of an article, essay, or book, however, Jane found very useful. She worked to internalize those lessons and did so well that her teacher commended her on her progress in that area.

  <>

  Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went. She came back from a week off
for Christmas with an idea for an entirely new kind of jet, one useful for traveling in space.

  She had carefully planned how to create a proof-of-concept demonstrator while on vacation, then how to present her plan. So on the second Monday of January she met with the head of the Astronautics Department. She'd already submitted a brief of her proposal to him.

  She met him mid-afternoon during one of her free periods in his office. It was large, book-lined, and had a decent view of the mountains to the west. He was a tall, slightly stout civilian with graying receding hair, distinguished looking to her eyes, wearing a dark-blue suit, white shirt, and red-and-blue tie.

  He rose from his desk and smiled at her, offering his hand.

  "Hello, Cadet Kuznetsos," he said as they shook hands. "Please sit. I'm not in the military so no military formalities are demanded."

  "Thank you, Sir."

  He took up a sheet of paper from his desk and glanced at it, then back at her.

  "An admirably clear and succinct document. Almost too succinct. What is this mysterious jet engine you want to build a model of?"

  "I'm mysterious because if I described the theory behind it most people would dismiss it as impossible. I wanted to be able to argue for its validity personally."

  "Given your past accomplishments in math, science, and engineering surely you would realize that we'd seriously consider even the most outrageous ideas."

  "I'd like to think that. Let's see if you still feel that way after I've presented my father's latest outrageous idea--"

  "Stop right there. I understand your desire not to subject yourself to the limelight for your ideas. But I quickly decided that the telemagnetism induction theory was yours, not your father's.

  "I have the highest respect for him. Indeed, his work is one of the cornerstones of my own development as a physicist. But every theoretician has a flavor, a taste, that's uniquely theirs. Telemag theory had that of someone else. I concluded that could only be you."

  Jane had to take a moment to process his words, then she went on.

  "Very well. But I'd still prefer to avoid that limelight you spoke of. I already have more than enough notoriety."

  He chuckled. "I'd call it fame. But, yes, it does have its drawbacks. Especially if one is a lowly cadet at the Academy. I'll avoid any wording about the provenance of your latest theory in my conversations and announcements that would lead to you. But enough preliminaries. What is this theory?"

  "There has been a lot of discussion about dark energy and dark matter in the last couple of decades. I began to think about the speculations and I decided there was some truth to them. But not enough.

  "I came up with another possibility. That empty space is not empty. That it is made up of particles I call unreal particles, tight bundles of multidimensional entities similar to the strings we've been speculating about for, what, forty years now. Unlike dark matter they have no mass, no reality as far as our universe is concerned.

  "Until a properly tuned telemagnetic induction field is applied to them. Then they become virtual. They have mass and magnetic moment. They can be manipulated magnetically and given a vector.

  "In the demonstrator I will create they will be sent in one direction as a jet. As soon as they leave the field they become unreal again. But before then they will have imparted an opposite vector to the device which made them, briefly, real."

  "Heady brew, indeed. Creating something out of nothing."

  "No. Bringing something from elsewhere into here but only till it springs back to the other-- I suppose we should call it another universe. NOT creating something out of nothing."

  "So 'unreal' particles visit us just long enough to give us a cheery hello and a pat on the back then blithely jaunt off."

  Jane chuckled. "A vivid even fairly accurate way of putting it."

  "The virtue of a good metaphor.

  "OK. This is worth spending a few thousand dollars on and the time of one third-year cadet."

  "At least six cadets. In my detailed proposal I've worked out a schedule with a 10% slack on each of the critical paths to allow for contingencies."

  "I'll have my staff look at it. If there are no problems I'll OK it and get it to you immediately. I'm very interested in seeing the results."

  "If there's a problem with money I can--"

  "There'll be no problems with financing. Surely you know that the rights to your battery and telemagnetic engines have already brought in millions of dollars. Of which the Academy gets a hefty chunk since the demonstrators were developed here and with our resources."

  "I do. I have a finance firm keeping on top of money issues. And I keep on top of them. But, ahh, money is low down on the list of matters I pay attention to."

  "The luxury of blithe youth and riches." He chuckled. "No, personnel are the bottleneck. We keep you cadets to a rigorous schedule. Finding helpers--your job--will take a bit of work."

  <>

  It did. Jane started with fourth-year cadets as they tended to have the most mature technical backgrounds. Most she approached would like to help but the last year at the Academy was especially busy since they would be graduating in four months. She only found one in the neary 1000 cadets in that class.

  She found three in the third-year cadet class and the remaining two she felt she needed among the second-year cadets.

  Her experience building the two kinds of telemag engines stood her in good stead on her space-jet project. On the second week in February she and all six of her helpers put a three-foot long demonstrator atop a big skateboard for wheels. Then they loaded it and several hundred pounds of instruments into a big rental moving truck and drove to the field long used by cadets to play with quadcopters and other remotely controlled flying machines.

  Even in the middle of the day in the middle of the week there were dozens of machines buzzing around the mile-square grassy area. Jane's crew cordoned off a quarter-mile diameter circle in the center of it with yellow-and-black crime-scene tape. With a bull horn the biggest and fiercest-looking of their crew warned everyone as far away from the circle as they could go as a potentially dangerous experiment was about to be tried.

  A few people left but most cadets settled down to watch just outside the circle.

  Jane got on the bull horn and said, "All we're going to do is smoke test a project. There'll be nothing to see. So leave, please. Who knows? The damned thing might blow up."

  "Yay!" "Blow UP!" "Blow UP!" "Blow UP!"

  She put down the bull horn and said, "Fucking idiots."

  Several of her crew looked her way from their ministrations on the demonstrator and grinned. The test setup included a heavy net covering the framework covering the space jet and the instruments surrounding it.

  "You expected something different?" said the fourth year cadet, a tall fierce-looking black woman who could have been a model for a Zulu warrior. She grinned and shook her head. Jane grumpily got back to supervising.

  It took a half hour to finish the setup to Jane's satisfaction. By then the onlookers had largely left. Lunch was coming up, among other reasons.

  The crew retired to the interior of the truck and checked the monitoring and control instruments. Central to them were computer monitors serving as video displays showing the output of several vidcams looking at the demonstrator from several angles.

  "Power on test 1," Jane said, reading from a long list on one of the monitors. "Power on test 1," repeated one of the seated crew members, who then pushed a button. This allowed a computer program to advance one position past the first step. A miniscule amount of power flowed into the demonstrator for one second then switched off.

  Over the next hour the tests increased the power and the times to the maximum setting. The last test was to last an hour.

  By now even Jane's crew had become blasé. They went outside to sit in lawn chairs under an open-air tent protecting them from the sun earlier and a light drizzle now. They ate, chatted, and did school work.

  "I find
it interesting--" said Antiope to the room. She was the "Zulu warrior" and had taken the name of a movie character. She had become Jane's executive officer. She was lounging in a chair and watching the various screens. Jane was standing as she watched those screens. She looked at the woman.

  "--that we are getting a slight steady push on our strain gauge. Even down here in atmosphere."

  The space jet worked best in space. Air, excluding space from its volume, theoretically should reduce a jet's force to zero. Still, their instruments recorded nearly a thousandth of the jet's calculated power.

  "I suppose," Jane said, "that even air has some space in it. Maybe space particles are so tiny they can exist between the boundaries between air molecules."

  Edward, a second-year cadet from Hawaii, said, "It's so weird to be talking about 'space' particles."

  A timer reached zero on one computer screen.

  "That's it," said Jane. "Let's pack it in. We're done."

  <>

  The space jet demonstrator was now a success. Jane and her crew were called into the office of the head of the Astronautics Department. He congratulated them and said that they'd be formally recognized at the end of semester. He cautioned them not to talk about the project until then, as the Academy was the focus of several espionage efforts.

  "I know it must sound melodramatic, like something out of movies, but it's unfortunately real and has been for decades. I want all of you to go with my assistant here to a security briefing. Except you, Antiope, Jane. You have both had the briefing?"

  They nodded as their five companions were led away.

  "I assume you are now going to the second phase of your project?"

  Jane looked to Antiope, Jane's "exec" on the project. The woman said, "Yes, sir. I've made all the arrangements with Arnold base in Tennessee for a Wednesday afternoon test. We'll pack everything up two days before and our secure shipping will handle it the next morning. We'll follow that afternoon in an Air Force jet operating out of the Colorado Springs airport. We'll have bunkage at Arnold and set up Wednesday morning. If everything goes right we'll run all our tests that afternoon."