Analog SFF, December 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  She swallowed. “You look pretty good yourself, especially for a guy who's been hit by a bus. Oh, Sergei! Why did it end like this?"

  "Because I was stupid,” he said. “I didn't know what a rare and wonderful person you are, and I—"

  "That's enough of that,” Todd said, coming back into the living room in pants and a sweatshirt. He still held the black package in one hand, and the pepper spray can was tucked in his waistband. “You apologized, she accepted, end of story. Let's move on.” He walked past Gina and did what she had been unable to bring herself to do: He reached out and touched Sergei. Grabbed his shoulder. “You're pretty solid for a ghost, there, bud."

  Sergei didn't shake off Todd's hand. Instead, he reached up with his own hand and touched himself on the face. “I do seem to have a little more substance than the usual ghost, don't I?” he asked. Yet when he turned, Gina could see the fireplace right through his chest. Not clearly—it was like looking through fog—but he was definitely not solid there.

  "Let's try walking through something,” Sergei said. He moved to the side and stepped toward the couch. Todd dropped his hand. Sergei walked forward tentatively and stuck one leg out as if he was trying to walk right through the couch's armrest, but he clonked his shin against the wood. “Ow! Okay, no passing through stuff."

  "You know,” Todd said, “I don't think you're dead. I think you're just some schmuck who broke into our apartment and thinks he can make up with an old girlfriend."

  "I would be very happy if you were right,” Sergei said. “How can we test this theory?"

  Gina snorted. “We can see right through you! Jesus, Todd, give the guy a break."

  "No, no,” Sergei said. “He has a point. This could all be an elaborate hoax. I am ... was ... a physics student. There could be some new breakthrough in optics that allows me to project an image around my body.” He narrowed his eyes, thinking, then snapped his fingers. “The internet. Look for my obituary."

  "You're kidding,” said Todd.

  "No. Try it. If I was hit by a bus in Kazakhstan, it should be on the internet.” He shivered. “And if I wasn't, then maybe I am ... somehow ... still alive! Maybe I was just injured, got amnesia, and made my way here. This was Gina's apartment when we were dating, and that was one of the happiest times of my life; it makes sense that I might return here if I were searching for my identity."

  "Yeah, right, in a Santa suit,” Todd said.

  "It is Christmas, isn't it? Maybe I mugged a Salvation Army bell-ringer for clothing."

  "And stole his bag of presents, one of which has my name on it? Come on."

  "You're right,” Sergei said. “It's far more likely that I'm dead.” He reached out to the mantelpiece to steady himself, and Gina watched the fireplace bricks ripple through his insubstantial body.

  She turned away and went into the kitchen, where she had left her laptop computer on the dining table. She lifted the cover and waited for it to wake up, then opened a browser page and typed “Sergei Popovich obituary” in the search box.

  The top hit was in Russian. She clicked on the “translate this page” button and walked into the living room with the laptop in her hands as the page loaded. She read the text aloud as it scrolled onto the screen: “December 15. Killed today in automobile collision were Anatoly and Maria Popovich, their son Sergei, and daughter Annya. Vehicle driven by Popovich collided with—"

  "Annya too?” wailed Sergei.

  "That's what it says here. I'm sorry.” She didn't offer to show him the picture of the little car wedged in under the front of the bus. Dozens of bus passengers stood around on the snow-covered ground, looking at it in that curious but detached way that people do after they've been on the scene for a while. One of the passengers was taking a picture up the valley, which was full of snow-covered trees.

  Sergei reached into his sack again. “Let me finish this so I can go back to oblivion. I can't stand this.” He pulled out another present, this one smaller and wrapped in green and red paper with a red bow on top. He read the tag. “Michael? Who's Michael?"

  "The kid next door?” Gina said.

  Sergei's eyes narrowed. “Mickey?” He reached into the bag again and came up with another present. “Elaine. That's Mickey's little sister, isn't it?"

  Gina nodded.

  "Maybe you can give these to them in the morning.” Sergei set both presents on the couch and reached into the bag again. This time he came up with a tiny gold-foil package with a silver bow. “Ah, Gina,” he said, reading the tag. He held it out to her.

  She set the computer on the couch and took the package. “Should we open them now?” she asked.

  Sergei looked down at his quasi-insubstantial body. “I don't seem to be disappearing completely yet. Maybe you should."

  Gina looked at Todd. Todd looked at her, then at Sergei. “If it'll help get you out of here, okay, rip away,” he said. He grabbed the bow on top of his package and wrenched it loose, pulling a long strip of paper away with it.

  Gina popped the tape on hers with a fingernail, peeled the paper back, and saw the classic round-edged velvet box that jewelry came in. Her heart had been slowing down a little, but it started beating faster again. Jesus, was it a ring? Before they broke up she had been hinting at Sergei—okay, more than hinting—that she wanted to get married. Could this be the engagement ring she'd never gotten? But now she was practically engaged to Todd! That ring was probably under the tree.

  She looked over at Todd, who was just opening the box he'd freed of its paper. He shook out a shiny, irregular black rock about the size of his fist.

  She laughed. She couldn't help it.

  "You bastard,” Todd growled. He lunged for Sergei and punched him in the face. Sergei staggered back and fell against the fireplace tools, scattering them across the floor.

  "Todd! Stop it!” Gina dropped her present and grabbed Todd and pulled him back while Sergei struggled to get up. Sergei's hand gripped the dustpan, and Todd pulled the can of pepper spray out of his belt and sprayed him square in the face.

  "Aaaggh!” Sergei yelled, turning aside and covering his eyes with his hands, but it was too late. He started sneezing and coughing and blubbering uncontrollably, and Gina found herself sneezing and coughing, too.

  "Damn it, Todd, what did you do that for?” she shouted.

  "He was going for the poker,” Todd said.

  "Bullshit. He had his hand on the dustpan."

  "And he gave me a lump of coal!"

  "You maced Santa Claus because he gave you a lump of coal?"

  "He's not Santa Claus."

  Sergei was crawling into the kitchen, trailing snot and tears and soot and ash behind him as he went. Gina helped him to his feet and propelled him into the bathroom instead, where she stuck him into the shower and turned the water on full blast.

  "Aaaii!” he yelled again, but this time it was probably just because the water was cold. He eagerly stuck his face into the stream even so, and let it wash off the pepper spray. The Santa suit was getting drenched, though, and the shower tiles that Gina could see through it sagged along with the water-laden cloth.

  Someone was banging on the front door. “Stay there,” she told Sergei, and went to see who it was.

  Todd beat her to the door. Charlie Dixon, Mickey and Elaine's dad, stood there in his pajamas. “What's going on in there?” he asked.

  "Nothing that concerns you,” Todd said belligerently, and Charlie took a step back, but Gina said, “We're having an argument, but Todd was just leaving."

  "I am not,” said Todd.

  "Yes, you are,” Gina said, grabbing his coat off the back of the chair by the door and handing it to him. “You wouldn't want Mr. Dixon to have to call the police, would you?"

  Charlie looked past Todd at her. “You're crying,” he said.

  "It's just pepper spray,” said Gina.

  "Pepper spray? Are you all right?"

  "I will be as soon as Todd leaves,” Gina said.

  Todd t
urned toward her with the pepper spray in his hand, but Gina held her ground. “You're an arrogant bastard, and I want you out of my apartment. Now."

  "I think you'd better do what she says,” said Charlie.

  "Or what?"

  "Or you'll be spending Christmas in jail."

  Todd considered that for a moment, obviously weighing the idea to see if it would be worth it. Apparently violence came up short. He turned to Gina. “If that's the way you want it."

  "I do,” she said.

  "I'll be back for my stuff later."

  "It'll be in a box by the front door."

  He gave her one last withering look—the same look she'd given Sergei when he'd announced that he was breaking up with her—then shoved his way past Charlie and stomped down the stairs. The door banged against the wall, then shut behind him.

  "I'm sorry we woke you up,” Gina said to Charlie. “Oh, wait a minute...” She ran into the apartment, grabbed the presents for Mickey and Elaine from the couch, and brought them back to him. “These are from Sergei. You remember Sergei?"

  "I do,” Charlie said. “And if you don't mind my saying so, I liked him a lot better than that doofus you just kicked out."

  "Me too,” said Gina.

  He hefted the presents in his hand. “You have a Merry Christmas,” he said.

  "Thank you. Merry Christmas to you, too.” She closed the door as he turned away, then rushed back to the bathroom, half afraid that Sergei would have vanished, but he was still there, stripped to the waist and mopping his face with a towel.

  "I have one last apology to make,” he said.

  "For what?"

  "For not being dead."

  She looked at him standing there in the bathroom, his hairy chest as solid and inviting as ever. The Santa jacket lay in a sodden heap on the floor, its surface shimmering slightly with light that didn't reflect quite true.

  "This was all a trick?"

  "The apology was genuine,” he said. “I was a total jerk, and if it takes me a hundred years to make it up to you, I'll dedicate my entire life to the effort. The see-through Santa suit, though; well, let's just say the physics lab has been doing some interesting things with waveguides."

  "So you figured you could fake being a ghost and—and what, scare Todd off?"

  "Nothing so simple. I'd heard stories about him. I figured I'd put him under some stress and let him show his true colors. It worked a little better than I expected.” He sniffed, wiped his face with the towel, and grinned the foolish grin she remembered from so many good times before.

  Was this a good time? She didn't know. Her whole life was in a shambles, and so was her apartment. But she'd felt that moment of connection when she'd looked into Sergei's eyes in the living room, and that had been one of the happiest—well, the richest, anyway—moments in recent memory. Sergei could certainly get her heart beating again, and not just by startling her.

  And she supposed he could put up a web page with a fake story about his death. Since it was unlikely that any other Sergei Popoviches had died in the last few weeks, his would be the first one returned by a search engine.

  "Why did you leave me for that vacuous blonde?” she asked him.

  He was already red, but his face grew even redder. “Um. Truth? You wanted to get married so bad, it scared me."

  That was the last thing Gina expected to hear. She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it without saying a word. She had bugged Sergei about it over and over, and since he left she'd been pushing Todd just as hard. She really did want to be married, for the companionship and the security it represented, and who knew why else. She had never really thought it through. She just knew she wanted it. Apparently a little too much.

  "Okay,” she said. “Guilty. What now?"

  Sergei stepped around her and went into the living room, where he retrieved her half-opened present. “Now you open your gift,” he said. “I got you a lump of coal, too. Slightly more compressed than Todd's."

  He knelt down in front of her and waited for her to open the package. She took her time, savoring the moment.

  It was the most beautiful ring she'd ever seen. It was two braided ropes of gold and silver, swirling around each other to encircle her finger and coming together at the top to encage a glittering diamond.

  "Gina, will you marry me?” Sergei asked.

  She could hardly breathe. She had to swallow twice before she could find her voice.

  "Let me think about it,” she said.

  Copyright © 2009 Jerry Oltion

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  Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: OPUS 150: DARK FORCES IN THE UNIVERSE by John G. Cramer

  This column is a milestone. In 1983, while I was on a one year sabbatical at the Hahn-Meitner Institute for Nuclear Physics in what was then West Berlin, I received a letter from Stan Schmidt informing me that Jerry Pournelle had decided that he no longer wished to be an Alternate View columnist for Analog and asking if I was interested in taking over as the AV columnist and “alternating” with G. Harry Stine.

  This was a problem. At the time I had written about 80 papers for physics journals and a few science-fact pieces for Analog, but I was well aware that writing science fact for a popular audience is harder and more time-consuming than it looks, and the idea of having to produce a sensible column for every other issue of Analog on a regular basis was scary. I was not at all sure that I would have anything to write about when the deadlines came around. But I decided that the Analog soapbox was too tempting to pass up.

  Fast forward to today. This is column number 150. Somehow, for over 25 years I have managed to meet each deadline with something (I hope) interesting to say about science in general and physics in particular. I think that popularizing science and making it accessible to interested readers is an important activity, and I hope you agree. With that said, let's consider the subject of this column: possible indications of a new “dark” force in the universe.

  * * * *

  It is now clear that our universe is a much stranger place than we had imagined only a decade ago. Its total mass-energy, according to our best cosmological models, divides up as 70% dark energy, 25% cold dark matter, 4% free hydrogen and helium, 0.5% stars (mostly hydrogen), 0.3% neutrinos, and only 0.03% atoms of elements heavier than helium, the stuff that we are mostly made of.

  Dark energy, easily the most mysterious of these components, is an intrinsic energy of space spread uniformly through the universe and possessed by each otherwise completely empty volume of space. It creates a repulsive “pressure” that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. Dark matter, the next most mysterious, is some unknown form of mass that does not make or absorb light and interacts gravitationally with itself and with the normal mass of stars. Dark matter clusters around galaxies in a more-or-less spherical “halo,” accounts for most of the galactic mass, and causes stars in the outer reaches of a galaxy to orbit the galactic center much faster than they would in the absence of the dark matter halo.

  But what is dark matter? It is definitely not ordinary matter (atoms, molecules, electrons) or any of the known fundamental particles including neutrinos. So what's left? Nothing ordinary, so we are pushed into speculating that dark matter is made of a previously unknown family of particles. Some theories that attempt to extrapolate beyond the standard model of particle physics predict new particles: e.g., supersymmetric particles, WIMPs, axions, etc. For the purposes of this column, we'll refer to them all as DMPs (i.e., dark matter particles).

  How do you look for DMPs? There are basically two techniques: (1) We assume that a speeding DMP can collide with a normal nucleus, giving it enough recoil energy and momentum to trigger a sensitive detector, and (2) We assume that DMPs come in matter and antimatter flavors that can annihilate with each other and produce radiation detectible with sensitive instruments in space. Both types of DMP searches have been going on for some time, and are getting results that are both interesting and confusing.<
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  Gran Sasso, located about 130 km from Rome, is the highest mountain in the Apennines of Central Italy. In 1995, twin highway tunnels connecting Rome to Teramo were cut through the mountain, and at the same time an underground particle physics laboratory was created there, consisting of three large underground low-background chambers shielded from cosmic rays by 1,400 meters of rock. In one of these chambers is the DAMA/LIBRA experiment, operating a cluster of sodium iodide detectors with a total mass of 250 kg (1/4 ton), designed to detect small signals arising from the collision of a DMP with a nucleus. When a nucleus recoils from a DMP hit, a small flash of light is made by the resulting ionization, and this light flash can be detected with photomultiplier tubes. The DAMA detectors can observe such signals over background with energies as small as two thousand electron volts or 2 keV (here keV means kilo electron volts, the quantity of energy needed to move one electron across a potential of 1,000 volts). DAMA has a lower threshold than that of most competing DMP searches. DAMA/LIBRA and its previous incarnation as DAMA/NaI have been operating in the very low-radiation Gran Sasso environment for a total of 11 years. During this long period of operation, some interesting and controversial data has been collected.

  In its yearly orbit around the Sun, the Earth has a speed of about 30 km/s. Our sun orbits the galactic center with a speed of about 220 km/s. If our galaxy is embedded in a cloud of DMPs more or less at rest with respect to the galactic center, the Earth passes through the DMP stream with a varying speed. At some times during its orbit, the Earth's speed adds to the Sun's speed, and at other times it subtracts. Thus, the DMPs streaming through the DAMA/LIBRA detector are expected to hit the detectors with more energy in June than in December.

  Therefore, one of the signals examined by the DAMA/LIBRA collaboration is any annual variation in the counting rates in the detector, and indeed they have found such a variation at about the 2% level in counts with energies between two and four thousand electron volts (2 to 4 keV). As expected, the signal reaches a maximum around June 2, just when the Earth and Sun speeds add. The variation has a period of exactly one year with a 0.2% uncertainty. They attribute their observations to the presence of DMPs in the galactic halo and ascribe a confidence level of 8.2 standard deviations to their result.