by Adam Moon
Experiment
Adam Moon
Copyright 2013 Adam Moon
All rights reserved
Cover design by Richard K Green
James Hoo was supposed to wake at 6am and so he did. He was supposed to keep immaculate personal hygiene and therefore spent the next twenty minutes making sure he did just that. It was necessary to eat a balanced and nutritious and yet light breakfast with all the essential vitamins and nutrients to get him through the day. He made the recommended breakfast and diligently ate every last drop.
He placed the dish in the incinerator with the knowledge he would be provided a replacement dish by the end of the day.
His mate, Margaret awoke at 6:30am. He greeted her with a smile. She returned his smile but hers was weaker, showing a hint of unease.
"Are you going to be alright with me gone all day?"
She lied when she replied, “Yes”.
He was permitted five minutes in the Government multimedia browser. He attached the input lead to the port on his left temple and made sure to position himself perfectly beneath the array of laser light emitting from overhead. His brainwaves were his fingerprint which granted him access to all that he was cleared to view. He ranked above almost all others at the corporation and therefore he had to be sure to keep everything that he learned from the browser to himself.
He spent four minutes in the browser.
He spoke to Margaret for one minute.
“Make sure the residence is appropriate by 2pm.”
She returned, “What level is the sweep.”
“Level-three. You’ve done this before. Don’t worry about it. They probably won’t even come in”
“What if they get suspicious?”
“That's why you need to hide your guilt and your fear. You can do that can’t you?”
“Of course,” she replied reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it. I fooled them during that level-seven sweep last month and that was when the evidence was all over me.”
“Just don’t let your feelings get the better of you. I know you’re emotional right now but we can get through this if you stay strong.”
She nodded and hugged him affectionately.
He returned her embrace and then stiffened up appropriately to leave the domicile.
To reach his office by 7am he would need to leave at 6:50am. At 6:50 am, James left for work.
His laboratory was contained within the same building as his domicile. The corporation had bought and paid for him and they made sure he was readily available to them at all times.
Margaret, his domicile mate (as the corporation labeled her) was selected for him by the corporation based on genetic compatibility and genetic traits. She was chosen because her genes suggested her to be meticulous to details, friendly but in an impersonal way, and devoid of any sexual urges. James might have just as easily been paired with a man, for the purpose of the mate was simply to ensure harmony and cleanliness within the domicile.
The corporation wanted its best assets well taken care of.
James had been genetically engineered by the corporation. All favorable traits were emphasized and unfavorable traits omitted from his genetic make-up.
He was engineered to be of genius intellect and to be exceedingly curious (he was younger than anyone within the corporation by at least twenty years and yet he outranked just about everybody, partly because of these programmed traits) but also subservient to the wishes of higher command. These were but a few of his main functions.
The essential traits insisted upon by the government would have been added to his genetic material as well. Not doing so was a crime.
James was not alone in this. By the end of the 23 century, natural mating was forbidden. The government deemed it irresponsible to bring a child into the world who was not guaranteed to be a perfect citizen. Citizens had to be capable in order to augment the greater good of all mankind.
Large corporations flocked to this banner and were the first to embrace designer humans.
By the end of the twenty fourth century, anyone found to have been born naturally was terminated. The exterminations were a part of The Enrichment program. The program not only ensured a better world population, but a smaller population because genetically engineering a human took many years to perfect.
It was almost a perfect science, but occasionally an engineered human would exhibit undesirable traits which had not been programmed. Scientists wrestled with this anomaly for decades but eventually they were forced to factor the variables into their calculations. For this very reason, all humans were raised in special camps where they were exposed to the most individually beneficial environment for their specific traits. In these camps they were under constant supervision in case they acted out of the ordinary. These oddball children were promptly eliminated from society before they could spread their corrupt influence.
James was lucky in that he'd been programmed with greater intelligence than any other person living today because he had secrets that took all of his ingenuity to keep hidden.
He'd felt different his entire life. Everyone was programmed to have little or no sexual urges, but from a young age he felt a strong desire toward the opposite sex. He also felt a strong urge to rebel against societal constraints. Because of his intelligence, however, he was able to hide his unnatural tendencies from the world.
James approached his laboratory. He was the head of experimental sciences. His employees would arrive at exactly 8am. By arriving at 7am he would normally have ample time to organize the day for his staff but for the past two years he'd been using this time for something other than planning the day's work schedules.
His latest design was a machine for the corporation that could instantaneously transport anything non-organic to anywhere in the universe. There could be multiple applications for such a transporter but the main use would hopefully be to transport a high powered telescope across vast distances of space to view far reaches of the universe. The strongest telescope was powerful enough to see perfectly across any given distance; its clarity was infinite, and that very telescope was now an important part of James’ experiment.
Telescopes were flawed in that they could not show things as they are in their present state; this was a light-speed barrier problem that until now, no one was able to avoid. With the transporter, however, the telescope could bypass the light-speed barrier problem altogether and therefore not only see the entire universe close up, but also in real time, as it is now.
The telescope would then return to earth where the images could be evaluated by the scientific team (all viewing had to be conducted from earth because it was impossible to transport organic material).
The transporter had been in Beta testing for over two years. It had just passed all testing phases and James was ready to pitch the idea to the corporate board members. There were enormous amounts of energy required to power his transporter when it was sent across vast distances and he worried that the cost alone might be enough to shut down the project.
He had a 10am appointment with the board later in the morning to address the issues and to see if the project would go forward or not.
He needed to get approval if he were to continue with his early morning experiments; experiments that were never divulged to the board or even to his technicians; experiments that were technically illegal.
His first unsanctioned experiment with the transporter would have warranted little more than a warning had he been caught. These latest endeavors, however, were what posed the greatest risk to him.
The transporter had been operational for just a few weeks and wasn’t even in Beta testing when James hit upon a new use for it. He theorized that he might be able to see into the earths past with it. If he sent the telescope out, say
, fifty million light years, he could zoom back in and see the earth as it was fifty million years ago. If he sent the telescope out further still, he’d be able to see even further back in time, and see every detail imaginable.
As of late though, this harmless tinkering had grown in magnitude as his theories and experiments became more daring and dangerous. He had become a corporate criminal.
Every day for the first year of testing, he’d come to work in the morning and spend an hour looking into the earth’s past.
Although his educational training within the children’s camps scarcely touched upon history (it was not deemed beneficial to his future as an experimental scientist) he had enjoyed it immensely. He had learned about the decadent twentieth and twenty first centuries. The over population and resultant famine of the twenty second century and then the social changes of the twenty third century which had ultimately launched the ideologies which shaped his world today.
Through his telescope, however, he’d skipped far past these recent histories and went back further than he could have imagined. He’d seen things that he'd never learnt about in the camps.
He had seen a variety of early hominids, pre-historic mammals, and then dinosaurs as he traveled further and further back through time. Further back still, he witnessed the planet entirely covered in ice like a giant snowball; and before this he saw Rodinia emerge as the first single proto continent with its partner ocean, Iapetus. He went back further and was amazed and even shocked by the appearance of the early earth, all molten and cloudy and poisonous. During his most recent viewing he had seen an incredible collision; one that he had never imagined possible for a planet that now harbored life. He saw the newly formed earth struck by another planet that was roughly the size of Mars. The debris that emitted from the catastrophe would coalesce into what would become the moon.
The drastic transformations the earth had undergone over billions of years seemed, to him, to contrast with the static society he lived in today. How could the dominant species on a volatile and ever changing planet be so fixed and immovable and plain?
It all fascinated him, but he knew it would not be financially beneficial to the corporation to use the device in such a way. These excursions were unplanned and unapproved by the board. The power required for such relatively short distances would not be too great and he could have asked permission, but his curiosity would not allow the possibility of rejection to stand in his way. None of what he had done that first year was technically illegal anyway.
Lately, however, he had secretly taken to adding bolder modifications. Because he had no permission for these extremely dangerous modifications, he was officially breaking the law. He would most certainly be sentenced to death for such infractions if he were to be caught in the act.
He saw potential in his technology that the board members could never understand. He couldn’t involve his staff of technicians in his experiments because they would certainly report him. His technicians would never comprehend the new applications anyway. They were still trying to fathom the abilities of the transported telescope. James knew they would only slow him down, and so he worked on these modifications alone four days out of the week.
He had finally finished his latest modification after months of work. He quickly readied the telescope for transport. He had twenty minutes until his staff arrived.
He calibrated it using his hidden command station located under the main instrument panel. In ten minutes it would return to him from where he was going to send it. He was giddy with anticipation, but he hid his elation out of habit.
He didn’t worry about a power drain any longer. He’d invented something altogether radical in order to alleviate that concern.
The transporter was now technically unnecessary. He had designed a built in power supply into the telescope itself. He pressed the send button and the telescope disappeared from the lab. This in itself was unusual because the transport had always needed a few seconds to gather enough power even if it were only transported a few feet away. What was even more unusual to James was that there was no rippling effect on the immediate surroundings as was normal. There was also a subtle noise associated with a normal transport; like a faint grinding sound, that was not present this time. The telescope simply vanished in silence.
James was so ecstatic that he wished he’d set the telescope to return in just seconds. He couldn’t wait ten minutes to find out if it was a success. He paced excitedly and after ten full minutes the telescope returned.
It was covered in interstellar dust and James quickly brushed it off with his hand so his coworkers wouldn't be suspicious and start snooping around.
He plugged the display into his left temple and gasped in amazement at what he was seeing. It was unfathomable.
In an instant the original transporters functions held absolutely no interest to him anymore. The telescope alone was now capable of so much more than simply transporting an object throughout the universe. His mind reeled at the implications of what he was seeing. He'd achieved the impossible.
When the display had finished relaying all the images and information to his brain, he deleted the source files and quickly looked around to make sure nothing was out of place.
He was startled to see his technicians already approaching the door. He gathered his reserve and addressed them cordially.
He delegated tasks and tests for the next hour but his thoughts lingered upon the images he’d seen earlier in the morning. He actively daydreamed as he pretended to work on the now obsolete transporter.
His meeting with the board was fast approaching and so he hastily gathered his notes and went into the adjacent conference room. He steadied himself and took a deep breath. He turned on the projection array and images of the five board members now flickered in front of him, holographically.
He smiled and addressed each of them in turn.
He worried that his speech was too long or too technical but he needed the board to believe that the project was beneficial to the corporation.
He began, “Ladies and gentlemen, the problem with telescopes has always been one of distance and of light, or more specifically, the speed which light travels over great distances. If you look through an earth based telescope at something ten light years away, you will see the object as it was ten years ago. This is because the light takes ten years traveling at the speed of light to reach the telescope from the object. The problem is amplified with greater distance.
If you look at a planet or star or galaxy that is a hundred million light years away, you are seeing it as it was a hundred million years ago. In that vast amount of time, the star you are seeing may have been dead for thousands of years or the planet may have hurtled out of its orbit. The galaxy you view might have been swallowed by its black hole nucleus just yesterday and we won’t see it happen for another hundred million years. In fact, these scenarios are only a few possibilities.
What you see at these greater distances is the past. You never truly get to see the universe as it is right at this moment.
My invention takes distance out of the equation and allows for a real time view of the heavens. If you wanted to see how that galaxy a hundred million light years away is doing today, you simply transport the telescope a hundred million light years out into space and view it up close.”
He was interrupted by the newest board member, Robert Chin.
Robert said, “I understand, but as the telescope is sent out to greater distances, there are an almost infinite number of unforeseen variables. The universe is constantly moving and changing. Planets orbit stars which in turn orbit their host galaxy. Galaxies move, some toward us and some away from us and all at different speeds and trajectories. You might transport the telescope out to a region of empty space only to find that it is no longer empty. This is yet another light-speed barrier problem. If you look into the sky and see nothing but empty space, you are still looking into the past. The present is something we are unequipped to see at a distan
ce. That seemingly empty region of sky may presently contain millions of stars. We just won’t be able to see them until the light reaches us from them.
My question is this, how do you know you won’t accidentally transport the telescope into the corona of a star or into an asteroid belt? That telescope is the most advanced and therefore most expensive telescope in the world. I’d hate for you to destroy it.”
James had thought about every possible question and was relieved to be answering one so intelligent.
He responded, “The transported telescope had a few near misses in Beta testing but the more it is used to map the stars in real time, the better the chances of avoiding impacts. We're mapping the skies as they are today and so the more we use it the better we’ll get at using it. We just need to take baby steps in the beginning. It helps that space is mostly empty too."
Robert seemed pleased with the response and so James continued, “The genius of the transporter is that it shows us our place in the heavens. It does not trick us the way light always has. It does not make us wait for answers. We may finally know if there is life elsewhere in the universe. We may finally get a glimpse of the grand design.”
James stared at each of their images, whilst hiding his apprehension. Finally, they convened to discuss the proposal amongst themselves.
James was about to switch off the projector when, Robert’s image re-emerged.
He said, “Wait just a moment. They’re almost done deliberating. We should have an answer in a few seconds.”
James’ heart skipped a beat but he hid his fear. A result this quickly could mean only one thing - his project was being scrapped. They’d probably have him working on something highly mundane before the week was out.
The board members all appeared before him and the senior board member spoke.
He said, “Although the implications of your design are somewhat vague to us at this moment, it is conceivable that your invention may one day be profitable for the corporation. Your genius continues to astound us Mr. Hoo.