REAP 23

by J J Perry

  Two minutes later, Bridget had it translated. “Duplicate message received. Authentication complete.”

  “The sacrosanct indicator,” Salish fell to his knees and whispered. “We are in the holy of holies.”

  “Praise the travelers,” Brandt called out in gratitude. His voice echoed in the chamber. He dropped to his knees.

  “I wish Maroche was alive to see this,” Bridget said. There was a long stillness where the three men muttered near silent prayers. Bridget spent the moment thinking.

  She broke the spell. “We need to be certain. I mean, that signal is pretty d-darn weak. We need to find a way to get more power so the light is more easily seen and more reliable. We need to get a picture to have some solid evidence. Let’s move to the next box.”

  The next recess was empty. No sign was above it. “Looks like 23 was the last one, just like the book says,” Brandt said after they found the last recess empty as well. “The book is true, dudes!”

  “How about you guys work on getting more power, and I’ll work on getting information about where 23 was headed.”

  “I’m in charge here, Ms. Too Big for Your Britches,” Salish said as he snapped out of his worship mood.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! How disrespectful of me. Did you say you wanted cream in your coffee along with a steaming towelette, Mr. Lowest Order of the Priesthood?”

  “You have a bad attitude, Bridget. God will—”

  “Stuff it!” she spat. “You and your sanctimonious superiority. I’m sick of it.”

  “Ease up, both of you,” Su said. “We’ll pretend Salish gave the orders. Bridge, git!”

  Bridget left the Bunker in a huff. At first, she angrily poured through all the data she had in her computer without finding destinations listed of any of the missions. She had all known data available stored on her device. After a couple of hours of searching, she started to set up a satellite dish for a communication system. Su came out of the dig with a face of consternation.

  “There’s a nuclear generator here. None of us has any idea how to deal with it safely. We don’t know the voltage or current specs needed to power the boxes. I was able to determine it is alternating current at sixty cycles per second, I think.”

  “What voltage measurement did you get?”

  “11.6 volts. That is a little low to run a system like this. Can you look up what common voltage was used when this was built?”

  Bridget zipped through data quickly as Su waited. “It looks like there were different standards in different countries initially. When this was built, all of Europe, including France, was using 210 volts, sixty cycles AC. Does that help?”

  “I don’t know. That was household power. This might be completely different. This is going to take some work. I don’t think we have what we need to convert our output up to two hundred volts. I’ll have to play with our generator and see what I can come up with.”

  That night, they celebrated with music and dancing without libations or decent food. Bridget had called a truce but still avoided Salish. Late in the afternoon of the next day, Salish called everyone together around their generator. “Su has something to say” was all he said.

  “The closest we can get to 210 volts is 180. The best I can do with the AC is fifty cycles per second. I think this is close enough for a brief power-up, but I wouldn’t want to run it at these specs for long. We haven’t been able to determine the current draw of each box, but they are all protected with a twenty-amp circuit breaker. With that information, I’m sure the generator can handle one wing at a time, easily twelve of the devices. It will take fifteen minutes to hook this thing up once we get it inside the power room.”

  “The question is, folks,” Salish said, “do we agree on trying this, given the disparities in the original configuration and the parameters we have with our equipment? We could go back and get the right stuff.”

  “It will be winter,” Bridget protested. “It’s already freezing here. We would need to wait until late spring. The generator might die. My vote is to do it now.”

  “I’m with Bridge,” said Brandt.

  “This is so important I think it would be best to rig this up with the right equipment,” Su said.

  “My preference is to wait,” Salish stuttered. “We have need of other witnesses. We could sell rights and make a bunch of money. For the church, you know.”

  “How much longer will their generator supply even the trickle of power it does now? Will it last through another winter, Su?” Bridget asked.

  “I don’t see how it is still working. It shouldn’t be. It could stop ten seconds from now. That is a risk, but it has kept on for centuries, why not eight more months?”

  “What if we lost all the date by failure to act?” Bridget asked the group.

  “I don’t want to be the one to screw it up,” said Su.

  “So…”

  “Stop, Bridget,” said Salish. “I am the leader, and the vote is tied. It is God’s will that we stop here and return next year.”

  “I’m not going to stop,” she declared, hand on hips, solid and unmoving. “Let me get this straight. Through a sequence of events that seems divinely orchestrated, we find ourselves here. We have a chance for a transformative revelation that will alter all of mankind. The message could be lost at any second. If we delay, there is a good chance we will not confirm the message we see. The government, once it learns of what we found, will probably restrict access, preventing us from returning. I think the chance of losing the message is far higher if we leave than if we power up with juice that is close but not perfect. It is irresponsible to bail out just to avoid being blamed for screwing it up, Su. Be a man.”

  “The vote is in,” Salish said firmly. “Let us pack up before snow hinders our path so much we won’t make it out.” Salish turned and walked away.

  “This is utterly illogical,” she argued. “It’s already running almost two hundred volts low. How could we possibly hurt it?”

  Su’s head hung as he stared at the ground. He raised a hand and rubbed his head, removing his deep-red beanie. “Sal,” he tried to say but choked on the name before it could be well heard. He cleared his throat and spit a hefty ball of thick sputum on the ground. “Sal, I’m changing my vote. Bridget is right. Again. We need to try this.”

  Salish stopped and turned. “If you do and something goeth wrong, it’s on you, Su.”

  “Sal,” Bridget interjected, “we are a team. We just voted 3–1. We move and act as a team. If it goes wrong, it is on all of us, not on Su alone. If you’re not comfortable with that, then why are you the leader?”

  “Like, grow some balls, dude.” Brandt smiled broadly.

  “If this goeth up in smoke, I shall take no blame,” Salish said.

  “So you get no credit if it works,” responded Su.

  “That’s not the way it works—er, worketh,” Salish said.

  “You can’t have it both ways, Sal,” Su argued.

  “This is mutinous against God.”

  “Dude, I know I’m eighteen and, like, look a little goofy. I’m not too bright, you know. Like, never hit the top of my class in anything except maybe ways to skip it. But even I can see you are screwed up, dude. We haven’t mutinized yet. We just want you to be, like, reasonable. In or out, dude?”

  This was followed by silence eventually broken by Salish. “Go ahead. If it destroys the box, it is to your everlasting damnation, every one of you. I wash my hands. I’ll be in the tent.”

  Twenty minutes later, Su activated the generator, and lights went on in their wing. The three explorers inspected boxes labeled 13 through 23. Only the console 23 had lights lit, indicating that the mission was successful and confirmed. Mission 14 had “possible” and a “confirmed” buttons lit. Brandt took a picture of each box. They shut off the generator and moved it to the other side. Four of the boxes
indicated a message had been received. Missions 2 and 5 had a light on under the “unsuitable” sign, and the message was confirmed. Missions 1 and 7 had indicators on under “possible” and “confirmed.”

  After they had viewed and photographed each box, Brandt fell on his knees, overcome with emotion. “The Book said this exactly. Mission 1 was a possible, and 2, 5, and 6 were not. I need to look again, but I think none of the known failures had an indicator lit. It’s a perfect confirmation. It’s true. It’s all so totally true. Oh my god!” He started to weep.

  “He’s right, you know,” Su said. “He is right. This is momentous.” He also fell to his knees and began to cry and pray in the darkness.

  Bridget smiled and pumped her fist.

  Later, as they were hauling the generator out through the main tunnel, Brandt asked, “What are we going to say to the little brown man?”

  “Let’s tell him we fried the electronics and destroyed a historical relic that was invaluable,” Su said. “All is lost! Woe is us!”

  “Cool. That is so righteous!”

  “I think we should tell him nothing unless he asks,” said Bridget. “Then let’s tell him that since he wanted to wait until next spring, we’ll tell him next spring what we found.”

  “I like that even better,” said Su.

  “It is, like, so fair.”

  They took the generator to the small vehicle and loaded it. It was snowing lightly on that cold autumn evening. The three of them picked up their gear and hauled it into the tunnel about ten meters from the entrance and set up to sleep. Salish sulked in the tent, saying nothing at first. Several minutes later, he came into their cave. He asked, “Why are you all moving into here?”

  “It is warmer than the tent will be tonight,” Bridget responded.

  “Not a bad idea. I think I’ll join you.”

  “If you do, we should strike the tent before too much snow falls,” she said. “We can get out of here early in the morning.”

  The sparse conversation the rest of the evening was about the preparations for travel. Nothing was said about the findings until they were all in sleeping bags.

  “So what happened in there this afternoon?” Salish asked. No one answered. “Come on. What happened?” Still silence. “I must assume that I was right—that you fried all the circuits and have nothing but disaster. Otherwise, you would be gloating.” The response was the sound of snowflakes landing in the distance. “Giving me the silent treatment, are you? Well, two can play at this game.”

  Five minutes later, Bridget said, “You wanted to wait until spring to find out. We decided to let you wait.”

  “Augggh! You twits! You weasels! You trash bags!”

  “This way, dude, everyone gets, like, what they want. Very righteous!”

  13.2

  “My last batteries went dead a week ago, Sal,” Bridget chattered and shivered. “But I know where we are without the satellite data. The glow on the clouds ahead is Perlagio.” She had navigated the group back to the starting point for three weeks. It had been raining and snowing for a full day. The snow was ankle deep.

  “I hope you are right. If we don’t get there tonight, Su will be dead,” Salish chattered back.

  “We won’t get there tonight,” she replied. “It is too far, and we need to rest. Pulling Su is slowing us too much.”

  “Leave me here.” Su coughed as he rasped, face beneath a wool blanket. No one could hear him. He had been too ill to walk for four days and slow for a week before that. The truck had no fuel and was abandoned sixty kilometers from the Bunker.

  “Why don’t I go ahead for help?” Salish proposed.

  “Why don’t you?” was the reply from Brandt, head down, leaning forward, breathing heavily as he dragged a stretcher made of limbs that supported a hacking, mummified package the size of a man. “Dude, you don’t spend much time dragging the stretcher.”

  “My palms are blistered.”

  “Funny those blisters, like, don’t show,” huffed Brandt.

  “Let’s keep going for two more hours,” Bridget said.

  “I can go for three or four,” said Brandt. “The snow makes dragging this thing easier. We have no groceries, and there is no Yanni’s so we could grab eggs, bacon, and toast and get back on the highway. Dudes, it’s not like stopping will give us energy.”

  About two hours after midnight, they reached a point where they could see a house with steam rising from the chimney. The shocked owners let them in and fed three of the four that could eat. Su was semiconscious. Soon, Su was in the hospital. In the evening, the news broadcasts covered the story of the team of four who returned from an expedition close to starvation with evidence that a spaceship from thousands of years earlier had found a planet capable of supporting human life. Salish Moor, a Reaper deacon, was the leader.

  The following day, a platoon of state police arrived in search of Salish, Brandt, and Bridget. Salish was taken into custody. Brandt and Bridget were not. They had gained passage the night before on a boat crossing the Mediterranean to Saharia. The captain was sympathetic with their plight and kept no record of them—just their money. Bridget had assumed that the authorities would arrest them. Saharia immediately granted the two asylum and promised not to extradite if Atlantica requested such. Salish was charged with several crimes including violating an archeological site, a felony.

  Brandt stayed in the Moroccan region, while Bridget went to Alexandria. She met with scientists from the university as well as from industry. Her story was compelling, and over the winter, leaders from many regions combined their efforts and requested permission to inspect the site along with experts from Atlanticus, all under the control of state guards or military police as necessary. The central government was resistant. In the early spring, they relented as they worked out a fee arrangement with parties who would participate in the expedition. In midsummer, 2053, the site was a hub of activity. The generator that powered the plant had negligible output. The signals from all of the REAP consoles appeared to be lost. Other than this disappointment, the area was of enormous interest to the scientific community as it was a wealth of historical science.

  Salish was convicted and sentenced to prison for twenty-one years. Brandt entered the Moroccan Institute of Science and Technology, MIST, at the invitation of the dean and president of the institute. As Salish was freezing in the coastal fog of northern Atlanticus, Brandt earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIST, a paradox that humored him until his death many decades later.

  Bridget coaxed, cajoled, and caressed the scientific community in efforts to convince them of the claims of her mission. The photographs were compelling but, arguably, could have been altered. In view of the signal data being lost and irreproducible and considering the potential evangelical motives of the religious zealots who reported the finding, all serious academics declined to trust her. Her petitions were ignored. She and Brandt made trips to Ceylon, Australia, and South America in failed attempts to gain credence. She ran out of money and hope.

  Brandt found a post at the University of Pantegune located on an island off the north coast of South America. He married, had a family, and worked in obscurity until he died a very old man. While the faith of many Reapers was enhanced and the membership of the sect increased, no one in a position of influence made or could make a serious effort to reproduce or confirm the findings after the initial confirmatory expedition. Once again, politics got in the way of world-changing discovery.

  14.0

  In 2023, twenty-nine years before the discovery of the REAP 23 message, a paper was presented to the Society of Physical Scientists and soon published in Scientific Advancements by Aulai and Malolai Baul, two physicists at the University of Borigine at Ceylon. It proposed a mathematical model by which space-time could be altered to move an object larger than a ship or airplane through space at speeds faster than light.
Over the ensuing years, this set of equations was challenged without success; however, no working model could be developed to confirm that such travel was possible. The Bauls led efforts in the engineering community to confirm the theory. There was an enormous power requirement as well as configuration-mass-density issues, making this an engineering challenge.

  The Baulian theory appeared to open the way to a theory of everything, the holy grail of theoretical physics for all time. They diverted their efforts from this goal as they sought creation of an experiment to prove that man could alter space-time. After years of no engineering success, they returned to pure theoretical physics. The formulas for the theory of everything seemed to them to be so close and computational capacity so great that a breakthrough was imminent. There had been theories that were mathematically rational but completely irrational in reality. Some ancient theories kept reappearing that required enormously complex formulae and an assumption that required eight to fourteen dimensions and was made of energy strings that were smaller than a proton to a similar degree as a proton is smaller than the galaxy. Other theories postulated that mysterious, undetectable energy or matter existed. This imaginary stuff provided the fudge factors needed to produce the observed answer from existing equations. The mathematical incompatibility of small particle physics and astrophysics was a problem unresolved from the time of Einstein. Like hundreds of other gifted and enormously intelligent men and women before them, the Bauls worked on this disappearing summit for the rest of their lives without finding the peak. Physicists and engineers in the newly formed Baulian Institute of Physics and Engineering, or BIPE, continued the work of confirming their space-time theory by experiment.

  Almost four centuries passed from the publication of the Baulian theory of space-time manipulation until marble-sized objects could be moved faster than the speed of light. This was the long-sought confirmation that the theory was both valid and applicable. Many more centuries would pass until a multitude of other obstacles to manned flight could be overcome.