Quantum Space: Book One in the Quantum Series

by Douglas Phillips

  Daniel paused. “Radios are utterly worthless for communicating between stars.”

  He shrugged. “A technology that’s not useful doesn’t get used. Every civilization must figure this out, probably not long after they become spacefaring. There’s simply no point in listening for electromagnetic signals from the stars. It’s like searching for a phone booth on a city street. You’re not going to find one—that technology is no longer useful.”

  He held up a finger. “But… if, by chance, they uncover the true nature of the universe, as we recently have, and they learn to control the dimensions of space, as we can now… then the problem is solved. Expand quantum space, compress normal space, and those enormous distances disappear. Even a star that’s four thousand light years away is no problem at all. We just did it. We’re doing it right now.”

  Bradley shook his head. “Fermi’s paradox, resolved.” He put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Good insight. It makes sense.”

  “But they haven’t abandoned radios,” asked Nala. “We’re communicating right now by radio.”

  “Perhaps radio is still useful at orbital distances,” Daniel answered. “And, yeah, given that they have radios, it’s possible they could have even picked up our transmissions. Maybe they compressed space somewhere in the direction of Earth at some point over the years. Who knows? But we would be like a rowboat in the ocean, shining a dinky little flashlight at planes flying thirty thousand feet overhead. We shouldn’t wonder why they never saw us, or heard us.”

  “And so, you think they know nothing about us,” said Bradley.

  Daniel nodded. “They probably didn’t know we existed. We’re newcomers. We only recently figured out how to compress space.” He turned to Shea. “Which brings me back to my original point. They’re asking for more information about us. I think we should provide it.”

  Shea’s eyes were cold and her face expressionless. “You’ve made a good point, Dr. Rice. Very well done. But I’m going to require a short delay.” She held up a hand. “Yes, I realize the countdown out in South Dakota is quickly approaching a point of no return, and I just received an update. Soyuz is now secured in a missile silo and there’s a half a ton of high explosives sitting on top of it. I’m inclined to keep a finger on the trigger… but not fire just yet. Before we go further with this communication, I want to bring in the president.”

  There was motion just behind Shea. Nala’s attention was now consumed by a window that had popped up on the operator’s console. Bold red lettering in a large font made it clear why.

  Malware detected. Quarantine?

  “What the…?” She hit the enter key several times. “Why won’t this work?”

  Daniel moved closer. “What’s going on?”

  “Something is running on the system. It’s not supposed to be there.”

  Shea noticed it too. “Shut it down!”

  Nala’s eyes were moving as fast as her hands. “I’m trying. The system won’t isolate it. Whatever it is, I think it’s accessing the Internet.”

  “Shut the computer down.”

  A tone sounded and an alert appeared at the bottom of the screen. New message. Nala hit the system power key on the keyboard, but the screen remained lit. “It won’t even shut down.”

  Daniel reached to the radio on the shelf and pulled the coaxial cable out of its socket. He looked at Nala anxiously as she peered at the screen. “It’s stopped,” she said. The virus warning message changed. Malware successfully quarantined. Daniel took a deep breath.

  “What the hell just happened?” Shea demanded.

  “Something got through the firewall. I don’t know how.” Nala pulled up a log file. “Looks like it was hitting URLs out on the Internet and downloading.”

  “Damn!” Shea spat. “It could have gotten to anything. Does this machine have access to government servers?”

  Nala nodded. “Fermilab, at least. Argonne too, maybe more.”

  “Oh, great.” Shea shook her head. “Find out what it took, can you do that?”

  “I’ll try.” She clicked a link in the security log file. It was a list of URLs accessed, with date and time stamps for each. “Looks like it hit about twenty different pages.”

  “What? Data files? Secure sites?”

  Nala scanned down the list. “No, actually. Pretty ordinary stuff. A couple more Wikipedia pages… the Wall Street Journal… MSNBC… Disney.com… even YouTube.” She looked up, very perplexed. “It was web surfing.”

  Shea looked pale. Bradley started laughing, and then tried to control it. Park hid his face in his hands.

  Plug it back in, Daniel thought. Maybe they’ll open a Twitter account. But he didn’t say it. Instead he silently pointed to the message indicator at the bottom of the screen. “A message came in just before I pulled the plug.”

  Nala first ran a quick scan. No malware detected. She opened it.

  Please sorry. More data. Good language.

  Daniel pulled his hair back with his hand. “Oh my God, they’re apologizing for aggressive behavior. This is really remarkable.” He couldn’t help but laugh, regardless of who else was in the room.

  Shea took a deep breath. Her face was a combination of pissed and wounded, but there was hint of a smile coming on, deep down in there somewhere.

  Bradley kept his composure. “We’ve just been attacked by an alien virus—and maybe that’s exactly what we needed.”

  46 Galactic

  The clock nearly screamed its message: 3:50 a.m. Thirty minutes left in the yang countdown. Daniel was using those final minutes one-on-one with Christine Shea. His first point was the effectiveness of a simple coaxial cable. Pulling the plug had shut down the intrusion, and the option remained available. Just when he thought the impact of his argument was waning, she stopped him and simply said, “Plug it back in.”

  His second point led from the first. Further communication provided more information, and unless there were signs of hostility, there was no logical reason to detonate explosives. The device inside Soyuz might even be a key component to their communication. The argument seemed to have some success, but the clincher came from an entirely different direction. How would she explain to the Russians that she had destroyed their spacecraft and all evidence it might have held? She agreed to play it minute by minute, but Daniel noticed she tightly clenched her phone, and he had no doubt McGinn was standing by on the other end.

  It seemed odd, reconnecting only half of a cable that disappeared into nowhere.

  “But be ready to pull it, if we need to,” she added.

  He pushed the cable back into its receptacle and queried Nala, “Anything else we need to do?”

  “Don’t think so,” she responded. “We should be back on the air. You might offer them a clue, though.” She motioned to the handheld radio.

  Daniel picked it up and marveled at the simple electronic device in his hand. In ways never envisioned by its designer, it represented the first link in a communication crossing an immense distance. Maxwell, Einstein, Hertz, Marconi and others had contributed to this moment. One discovery leading to the next. There would be new names to add to the list, several from Fermilab. Scientific progress spanning several centuries had put into Daniel’s hand the power to reach the stars.

  “My voice comes to you as a modulated radio wave sent across four thousand light years of space compressed to a small fraction of that distance by coherent neutrinos. I hope the reception on your end is good.”

  Nala looked at her screen and back up to Daniel. She gave him a thumbs-up. They waited in silence, but not for long. The radio’s speaker crackled with the vibrational voice, and this time it was far clearer.

  “Honor to meet you.”

  Daniel felt a surge of scientific pride, and a validation that his instincts had been right. There was nothing to fear from this voice. It was first contact with an intelligence who likely shared our curiosity. At the very least, it was an intelligence benevolent enough to provide an invitation to m
eet.

  He looked at Shea, and this time she encouraged him to continue. Bradley held his phone up to the radio speaker, and Nala whispered to him, “Don’t worry, I’ve got a recording started. We’re capturing the webcam video too.”

  The webcam window still provided the same view. The spherical hub more than filled the screen. Several smaller spacecraft—satellites, whatever they were—moved across the foreground. The black wedge with the red light had moved closer to the center. There was really no way to know what any of these machines were doing, but it was fascinating to watch.

  Who was on the other end of this radio connection? And speaking from which object? This, too, was unknown. The spherical hub had no windows and nothing that resembled a control room, or a “bridge.”

  He keyed the mic again. “You have created a very great technology. We are inspired by what we see.”

  “Thank you. Welcome. I am Core. I come from many.”

  Daniel smiled. Real communication; this was no echo. Absorbing a few dozen web pages and YouTube videos was apparently sufficient to get you this far—if your cognitive abilities were high enough and your computers were fast enough.

  He spoke to the room. “I’m not sure what that last part means, I come from many.” No one else had an answer. Daniel held the radio up. “We have many questions for you. In our language, do you understand the difference between a statement and a question?”

  “Yes.” The vibrational voice made it sound more like yezh, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. “I help your questions.”

  “Thank you. Are you technology? Or biology?”

  “Many are biology. Many are technology. I am both.”

  Daniel grinned as the meaning hit home—he was conversing with a hybrid intelligence, a cybernetic organism. For decades, science fiction in books and movies had provided a single view of cyborgs—and it wasn’t pretty. This particular disclosure might be a hard sell to the average joe. Don’t worry, they’re nice cyborgs.

  Shea might have picked up on the disclosure too. “Ask him why they haven’t shown themselves to us,” she suggested.

  Daniel decided to rephrase it in a simpler and friendlier way. “Thank you. We would like to meet you, in person. Will you come to Earth?”

  “No. I am Core. I am what you see.”

  Daniel had assumed the sphere was a ship, but it was possible the whole thing was one living entity. “Will anyone visit us on Earth?”

  “No. Too soon. You will learn.”

  Daniel shrugged. “He seems pretty certain about protocols. Maybe we leave it at that for now.”

  Shea glanced up to the clock on the wall. There were now less than twenty minutes. “Okay. Then I want to know about our astronauts.”

  Daniel agreed. There had to be a connection, and this was a golden opportunity to find out. He keyed the mic. “Our astronauts… our humans in space. They’re missing and we’re worried. Can you help us find them?”

  “Not missing. They are home.”

  It was an interesting response, perhaps even promising. “Did you send them home? Where?”

  “Not in your space or your time. They are alive. They are home.” Simple words, but potentially packing a lot of meaning. Alive was good, but the rest could go either way. Not in our space or time?

  “I don’t understand. How can we bring them into our space? We think they will die if they return. Anything alive will die.”

  “Yes. Alive will die. Time answers. You will learn.”

  Nala turned around. “I think he has an answer to the cell degeneration problem. At least I hope he does.”

  “Time answers,” Bradley repeated. “Something to do with the countdown?”

  Daniel shook his head. “Maybe, but it could be more than that.” He keyed the mic. “Your device is counting down. What happens when it finishes?”

  “Be ready. Humans are alive. Time answers. They will not die.”

  Daniel pivoted to Shea, and she was already dialing. “I’m on it,” she said.

  Be ready. The connection between the astronauts and the yang countdown was plain, even if the details were still obscure. Soyuz was ground zero, but not for any alien invasion, and McGinn would surely be getting new instructions.

  Daniel glanced to the second monitor, where Marie’s video link was displayed. Attendee has disconnected, it read. His heart raced and he wished the best for Marie. Somewhere at Ellsworth Air Base, he imagined she was probably running as fast as she could go.

  He keyed the mic. “Thank you, we appreciate your help. We’ll be ready.”

  “I help many. Add your voice.”

  “When you say many, what do you mean?”

  “Many voices. Many people. Many planets. Do you add your voice?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Daniel without hesitation.

  “Welcome. You will learn. Data voice more. Many ideas. Many people.”

  A tone chimed on Nala’s console, and the new message notification lit. She opened it and her face lit up. “Two attachments. Wow, formatted JPEG and MPEG. They’re making this pretty easy.”

  The vibrational voice continued, no longer waiting for questions. “Observe. One of many. They are people like you. Their planet is near. You will be friends.”

  Nala already had one of the files open, and Daniel looked over her shoulder at an alien landscape with intriguing but indecipherable shapes in the foreground. “Is that why you sent these images to us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you. I hope we will be friends.”

  “It is time. Return later. I will help.”

  “It’s time to end our conversation?” asked Daniel.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “It is time. A new count will start. Return then. Goodbye.”

  A new count—the yang. Daniel looked up at the clock. Exactly 4:20 a.m. Zero hour had arrived. Whatever the yang was designed to do, it was happening right now. The lives of three astronauts were intertwined with this specific time, and according to Core, they were alive. Marie would be there.

  A message icon on Nala’s display lit up again. She quickly opened it, and Daniel stood close behind.

  1 complete. 7 remain.

  She laughed. “Well, well, it looks like we’re on a lesson plan. Eight in all and we’ve just finished the introductions.” There was another attachment, and she opened it to find a multiple-page document. On the first page were many intersecting circles with hash marks around their perimeters, each connected to other circles by lines at various angles. There were numerous notations of unknown purpose. A second page was mostly script text with an embedded graphic that looked like a vehicle.

  She turned around to Daniel. “I think our lesson plan comes with homework.”

  There would be time to study the document, hopefully with some help to understand its meaning. “What’s in the video file?” Daniel asked.

  Nala clicked on the MPEG attachment, an act strangely foreign and familiar at the same time. She enlarged the video window to full screen while all five in the room gathered around. Together they witnessed moving images no human had seen.

  Nala gently shook her head. “They’re beautiful.”

  47 Reunion

  The Air Force staff car accelerated down the narrow country road, creating a plume of dust and gravel that blasted into the grasslands on either side. Sergeant Peabody held the wheel, with Colonel McGinn in the front passenger seat. Marie and Pixie sat in back. Marie tightly gripped her phone, which continued to display the video feed from inside Soyuz. The markings on the yang showed the equivalent of 003. Seven minutes.

  McGinn twisted around and yelled over the noise of the speeding car and the potholes in the road. “Not much farther. They’ve removed the explosive pack and are getting a cable on Soyuz now. They should have it up in a few minutes—about the time we arrive.”

  “Can we get an ambulance out here?” Marie yelled back.

  “Already called. Base EMTs should be right behin
d us.”

  The early-morning darkness hid the grassy hills of South Dakota. Marie could see a few telephone poles flying past, but little else. We’re so close. Please let this work. The knot in her stomach was getting worse, as was the tension in her temples. Her hand shook as she touched the face of her phone to prevent it from shutting off. The yang showed 002.

  Not far ahead were lights. A flatbed truck loomed out of the darkness, with crew members working under a floodlight attached to the back. Peabody slowed the car and they stopped a safe distance from the activity.

  Marie jumped out and ran to the light, with McGinn and Pixie not far behind. A man stood next to the truck, operating a large hoist. Its cable disappeared into the depths of a large circular hole in a concrete pad. He turned as she approached. “Stand back, ma’am, it might swing a little when it comes out.” She moved back a step, but the intensity inside her would not allow much more.

  The floodlight illuminated the upper portion of the hole and she could see the cable was moving. A second later the top of the capsule was visible, and then it was out, swinging to one side. One of the other men got a hand on it and steadied its swing. “Make room!” the operator yelled out over the noise of the hoist. He swung the capsule away from the hole and set it down on the concrete pad. Another man tilted the floodlight to shine on Soyuz’s resting place. The operator turned off the hoist.

  It was suddenly quiet. The only sound was the wind blowing through the surrounding grasslands. They gathered around the capsule as one of the men climbed to its top and began to open the hatch. Marie peered through the circular window on the side. As the hatch opened, enough light shone in that she could just make out the yang on the control panel. The last character on its face flickered. 000.