Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep
Page 2
Another vehicle looked like a small train, but in the weirdest shade of green-orange that made it hard to distinguish any features, making it unpleasant to look at.
Yet another looked organic, with shell-like armor plates around a circular window, and with hundreds of small legs. But it couldn't be organic, could it? I wasn't laughing anymore.
People were walking about, taking notes and touching things while measuring with strange devices. I could also see armed men looking nervously around the edge of the room. They all glanced to a corridor to the right, further ahead into the hall.
Was this some elaborate prank set up by someone? Things made in papier mâché to drive me insane? Whatever it was they had near succeeded. I was baffled. Erling saw it and laughed.
"I know the feeling. All you see here is real. We have brought home technology so vastly different to our own that it's no longer science fiction. It's the future, and so far in it that the rest of mankind could be cavemen. This, young man, is what you can and will learn more about. Our branch of the cooperative is one of the most front-of-the-line companies in the world, period. Some people are ahead of their time. Einstein was decades ahead of his time. Leonardo Da Vinci as well. Have you seen his classic helicopter blueprint? Shervi specializes in finding people that are ahead of their time and have been doing so for the last fifty-three years. We have an impressive setup of people capable of thinking outside the box, around the box and even in terms of completely new boxes, shaped like grapes." Erling let out a rumbling laugh that made the air shiver around him. "In the early 70s we already had technology up to par with today's computers. Of course we cannot make these kinds of things public, because the public would not understand what they see. But in our field we have come to accept just how small we are in the universe, and we have profited from this fact. Where others are stopped by ridiculous laws and prohibitions, we can grow and benefit from what can be thought out and implemented. We don't work with morals and ethics. We work with limitless science. Of course we needed a breakthrough, and it came in the early 80s when a man called Jarmund Spearman cracked an important piece of the quantum mechanical field. Are you familiar with quantum tunneling? Jarmund refined the whole concept. The scientists out there are still years behind. Decades even. Anyway," Erling added nonchalantly, like he was discussing yesterday's lunch, "he discovered, and managed to control, a tear in the fabric of space. Or perhaps what you would call a wormhole."
A big piece of the puzzle fell into place. It sounded like ... nonsense. Wormholes were still a theoretical mystery. But I had seen the machines which I couldn't explain within my frame of reference. I had to evaluate and rewrite that frame. The thought of that made me feel nauseated.
"Awesome," I said, trying to sound relaxed. It did not compute well.
"Indeed. And this is where you come in, Rasmus. We tried your sound theory and had some extraordinary, albeit short-term results. I will tell you more about this in a few minutes. The machine Clayton showed you, that's your sound machine, or a prototype of it. We use one to transmit efficient sound signals to the wormhole area, where we can control the destination coordinates. There's more to it of course, but in short your idea helped us think in new ways. Progress was fine, at first, for several weeks. We improved our landing accuracy by 327 percent and can now walk through the wormholes like this." He swiped his arms down along his body. "At the beginning we had some ... tougher times. Entering other places from five meters in the air. Got a broken foot, some cracked ribs. Small accidents like that. But upon implementing your ideas we managed to make rapid progress. Most impressive. We adjusted your original schematics of course. In its current state it was inefficient. We call it a 'Sonar Enhancement and Locator Device', or in short; S.E.L.D."
"Okay," I said, feeling numb.
"I see that I'm going too fast, but no matter. It's important that you hear this and understand what kind of help we need from you. That and the fact that you could immediately tell that something was wrong with the S.E.L.D is most valuable to us. Let me try an example. Imagine that you are holding a water hose, spraying water against a wall. The closer you hold your hands to the nozzle, the more accurately you can steer the water, correct?"
"Yes, that sounds reasonable."
"S.E.L.D allowed us to get closer to the nozzle, and thus fine-tune our landing parameters dramatically. Before that we could fairly accurately aim for, let's say an uninhabited planet, but we could never be entirely sure where we got off at. It made it harder to construct advancement bases and slowed progress. One day we could land on the southern hemisphere of the planet, and the next day the northern. Most inefficient. We needed coordinates to know where we should aim the 'water hose', and getting accurate coordinates is so much easier the closer you are to the destination. Hence we build advancement bases where it's suitable, to be able to measure feasible coordinates. Imagine that you had a Hubble telescope in the Andromeda galaxy instead of here. What would you see if peering through the telescope, when over there? You would see other planets more clearly, and you would be able to calculate their positions more accurately. This helped us drastically speed up the process, until one day when some unknown force reached into our tunnel and gave the S.E.L.D a dent. Or machinal internal bleeding, as you called it."
"Some what? Some alien?"
Erling went silent and when Rasmus met his eyes he could see a grave, serious look on his face.
"We don't know. Yet. Before this incident we had access to sixteen different, well functioning advancement bases. Now we can only reach one."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that earlier we could feed coordinates into a computer and decide where the wormhole should take us. Now it takes us to a place we can't locate. We have no known reference points. The place is uninhabited, yet is similar to our own planet in many regards. And in some it's very different. There's oxygen, but we haven't found much else of remarkable interest. We're constantly collecting data, of course. But well ..." He went silent.
There was something deeply troubling about that statement. Erling had such a casual way of describing it that it felt real; so very real. To be honest I wanted to believe him because if it was true that meant Clayton was right; I was privileged. I also realized that there was something else to this whole strange situation.
"So what do you want me to do?" I asked, both dreading and wanting the answer. I wanted it badly.
"First of all, I want you to take a look at the S.E.L.D, see if you can find out what went wrong with it. Second of all we're putting you in a crash course on wormhole traveling. Yes," he added when he saw my jaw drop, "you are going to another planet to see if our equipment on that side is functional. We've had some malfunctions lately and we want a 'natural born engineer's' opinion of what might cause the failures. And you can relax, you are not the star here. You will go as a theoretical engineer supporting experienced staff and soldiers. So far we have not encountered any hostile aliens, but well, we have encountered some interesting species. As I said, the planet you are going to is deserted. As far as we know," he added and laughed. "We have all done the traveling and it's perfectly safe, oh except when you end up some distance in the air, of course. Or in deep space, ha, ha. But other than that, safe."
"What if I don't want to?" I tried. It wasn't that I didn't want to go. Already I longed for it. How many could say they had been on another planet? Not many. But I wasn't really sure I liked that they just assumed I would tag along. Erling knew, of course.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "You can't resist it. No one here has resisted. And we're very happy to have the S.E.L.D inventor on board. Perhaps we should've brought you in earlier, but we didn't have issues until just recently. Welcome aboard, Rasmus."
Defeated. Employed. And I didn't mind. "Thanks," I said.
My first task was to get to know the Alpha Harbor. Erling showed me the dining room, the sleeping quarters, the machine halls containing strange alien technology mixed with our own and d
oors to the bio-organic section, where experiments of all kinds were taking place on a regular basis. He told me they discovered a flower on a planet, that thrived on sulfurous gases, and emitted small, but clearly visible, balls of energy into the air. There wasn't that much energy in it, but enough to fuel a light bulb for a few seconds at the time given a certain rate of harvesting. Very interesting. Erling also showed me the doors to the wormhole section, but I wasn't permitted to enter at this point.
"In a week," he said. "You must do the basic training, which considering the circumstances is a joke. None the less the training is mandatory. It's more of a mind adjustment than a physical one. Being warped through time and space for the first time can be ... overwhelming. Not to mention the sight of completely unknown sceneries. Mankind can think up many things, but some environments we just can't comprehend before we stand in them."
During the week that passed I came to love the Alpha Harbor. The people were really what Erling had said they would be. They thought outside the box and they had a positive attitude towards everything. The days flew by. The training course consisted of watching movies of what I thought was Rorschach spots, mixed with scenes from various known landscapes, and some unfamiliar ones. I saw pictures from a jungle, some white desert, snow filled mountains and green lakes. The weirdest thing was a purple vertical wall that seemed to bubble.
"Imagine you are there," Martin, the tutor, kept repeating. So I did. And the week passed.
Erling was right, in the end. The basic training was a joke, but everyone kept insisting that it was necessary and knowing that I watched non-terrestrial environments filled me with excitement.
I also got to look more at the S.E.L.D, but all I could tell was that something wasn't right with it. It was something with the frequency of the rotors inside it. They sort of skipped a beat every now and then. Like a heart skipping a beat randomly. Some rumors in the kitchen talked about the 'wormhole anomaly'. Apparently it had a weird, sick, look nowadays, which explained the nervous soldiers, half expecting to be sucked into it. Erling, and several others, assured that it couldn't happen though. They had made sure to build in safety mechanisms to prevent just that.
And so the day came when the team was ready to traverse into the unknown. Among them were Beata Nox, an older woman with gray hair and green eyes, professor Henning Untermann, the team leader, and a whole bunch of engineers I didn't know too well.
We also had an escort of three soldiers, easy going fellas, nothing like I'd imagine a soldier. They laughed, complained about the weight of their packs and cursed like everyone else. The leader's name was Ortega. The others were Dan and Marko.
Erling picked me up that morning, a bit earlier than appointed.
"Good morning," he said in his usual happy mood, though I noticed something was slightly different. I could hear he was concerned about something. "I hope you slept well," he said. "Today you are going on a fantastic journey. It shouldn't take more than a few hours for you guys to examine and fix the machinery on the other side. When you are done you come back and report to me. Very simple. Do you have any questions at this point?"
"Not really," I said, trying to figure out which questions swarming around my head were the most important ones.
"Very good. I'm here a bit earlier so I can show you the actual wormhole. It can be intimidating the first time."
"I'm sure I can handle it."
Erling gave me a quick smile. "Of course."
He led me down the corridors to the section where I knew that the wormholes were, but where I hadn't been before. He took me down several floors. I counted seven levels of descent before we finally broke off into a narrow corridor. Erling saw my puzzled look.
"When we first got our hands on the technology to fabricate wormholes we worried we would create a black hole instead, swallowing everything. Superstitious nonsense in the end, but well, to eliminate some of the risks we built the chamber far below the surface to accommodate for any unforeseen events. Everything worked according to plan in the end. Very nice."
"Why don't you guys use wormholes in space instead? Shouldn't that eliminate the risk?"
"Ha, ha," Erling laughed. "I guess we could somehow install a wormhole device on a space ship, but why should we? We skipped that part in the tech evolutionary chain. In fact I'm not sure mankind's current technology could support it, nor ours ... Besides, if we were to launch massive space ships there would be questions. This is better on all levels."
He led me on through a series of corridors until finally stopping in front of another vault door. It had a copper sign on it, with words in silver:
Inside lies the beyond. Mankind no longer leap, we fly.
"Famous words of Jarmund Spearman. He thought about 'warp' instead of 'fly', but settled for that word. I like it. Simple. Neat. Fitting."
I could only nod. We fly.
Erling gently pulled the valve and shoved the door open. Inside was a large room and I could immediately see another S.E.L.D at the side of the wall. It stood against an oval metal frame attached to the floor, two and a half meters high and half the size across. Inside the frame there was a gray fluid mirror, or a very thin slimy membrane, that seemed to vibrate slowly, stretching out and retracting. Almost like breathing. It didn't reflect light and it was depressingly colorless. There it was, the wormhole. There was a deepness in it, like it was hiding shadows somewhere just out of sight. I felt a coldness in my heart when looking into that pulsating gray void. There was something utterly sick with it. All the rumors could not make it justified. I didn't know what it had looked like earlier, but it wasn't supposed to be like this, it really was an anomaly. Quicksilver come alive. A liquid maw. And I would enter.
"Yes," Erling agreed. "It's not pleasant to look at, and it has gone paler since we started, even with the new S.E.L.D and refined technology. Don't worry though. It's perfectly safe. We had a test party go through this morning. Everything looked normal. The place you are going to is not like anything you could prepare for. It's not so different from Earth, but at the same time it's very unlike our environment. You have to be there to understand. Did I mention that the tunnel was pulled there? We wouldn't have found it otherwise because this planet is hidden deep within a large planetary system, housing fourteen seemingly dead planets. Except this one that has unique environments. You'll see for yourself."
The team started to arrive shortly. In total we were eleven people, including the three soldiers. They tried to look casual, but I could see them glancing nervously towards the wormhole, the portal to another world. It was still so bizarre to think about.
Everyone had backpacks containing their equipment and we lined up in front of the portal.
"All right," Erling said. "Ortega is head of security for this trip and professor Henning will take care of and coordinate the operation. You should be able to return in four to five hours with new data and hopefully find a more permanent fix for our equipment on the other side. And this time," he added, "bring back some valid samples from the sea. Take care of Rasmus here, as it's his first trip. Good luck."
They murmured in approval.
"Are you nervous?" Beata asked. She smiled and nudged me in the side. I was so nervous I almost couldn't move, but tried not to show it.
"Not at all," I said, shivering. The thought of going into that thing would make anyone nervous. The presence of soldiers didn't help either. They loaded their rifles and held them in front of them, ready for use.
"It's a simple mission," Beata said. "Some piece of shit equipment keeps breaking down and we need to try to gather more coordinates for other jump locations. We've done dozens of missions like this. Don't worry."
"Yeah. Okay."
"Me and Henning go first," Ortega said. "The rest of you follow in five second intervals. The tunnel is stable right now, but you know what happens if it starts to fluctuate."
Everyone laughed. "Let's not have that again. I had diarrhea for a week last time," a bearded engineer said, w
ith a snort. More laughter.
And then we were off.
Ortega took a deep breath and walked through that gray, unnatural veil. It was like seeing someone disappear in mist, only more distinct. The membrane didn't even flinch. It just swallowed him out of existence. Then Henning went in, followed by the others, one by one. The line started shrinking. There was never any time to reconsider. I just followed suit, and when I stood before the gate I was drawn to it. I stepped forward. There was an ever so slight resistance, like touching a soap bubble, a moment of black silence, then I stumbled into a sickly yellow light and heard the sound of something crackling behind me. I fell to my knees and someone quickly dragged me up.
"You don't want to stay there. You'll get the next man on top of you."
I coughed, looked down on yellow soil, before managing to raise my head. The air was the most immediate difference I noticed, it was oily and tasted like static electricity. Something like being close to the mediterranean climate, but with the crispness of being trapped inside a tesla coil. It wasn't hard to breathe, but definitely different and not comfortable.
"You'll get used to it," Ortega said. "Just imagine that you are at home. It's perfectly safe, almost the same components as our atmosphere."
I nodded, trying to acclimate. At first everything was a yellow blur, then I realized that it was the sun and the environment.
Behind me was a black cliff, and on its surface the wormhole exit, like a gray swirling outgrowth. I couldn't pinpoint what it was, but it looked healthier here than it had on Earth. And then it struck me, we were not on Earth anymore. I spun around, quickly scanning the surroundings, and when I did my jaw dropped.