Omega Sol

by Scott Mackay

  Having never been to Camp David before, he wasn’t familiar with its setup, but knew the underground bunker was a section of the complex most visiting diplomats never saw. It was big, beneath the skeet range, and included not only domestic quarters but also several professional offices. It housed a medical clinic, a movie theater, a swimming pool, and a situation room. It was to this situation room that white-helmeted military police escorted Cam and Lesha.

  Several people were already there, including General Blunt, Oren Fye, and Brian Goldvogel.

  To his great surprise, a half dozen delegates from the People’s Republic of North China were there as well, all wearing tailored gray suits with little PRNC pins in the lapels.

  Cam took a seat and leaned toward Fye. ‘‘I thought we didn’t have diplomatic relations with them anymore.’’

  ‘‘There’s been a coup. Po Pin-Yen’s ruling junta has been overthrown by a more moderate faction of the army. The decision to launch against us, particularly when all the initial nuclear events occurred along the equator, was widely opposed. In fact, you could say it was a flashpoint for trouble that’s been brewing a long time.’’ He motioned at the gray-suited Chinese. ‘‘They’re here to help. These are their top scientific and military advisers. They finally understand that we’re all in this together.’’

  President Langdon, Chief of Staff John Gielgud, and Secretary of Defense Leroy Congdon arrived a short while later.

  General Blunt got up and summarized events: Alpha Vehicle’s arrival on the Moon, the construction of the towers, the various attempts to communicate, the military actions, and the red giant progression in the sun. The Chinese had earpieces, and Cam heard the faint burbling of Mandarin. General Blunt, in the tone of voice of a grandfather describing a favorite old memory, introduced Cam.

  ‘‘Dr. Conrad is the world’s top expert on hyperdimensionality, and also the only man who has had any direct contact with the Builders.’’ Blunt then went on to describe how this contact had been quantified using various scanning devices to track significant and unique changes in Cam’s brain, particularly his sylvan fissure. ‘‘He’s here today to explore with us possible new ways of either reopening communications with the Builders or in some way reversing the red-giant process in the sun. Without further ado, I give you Dr. Cameron Conrad.’’

  Cam rose and went to the front.

  He began by acknowledging the president, the chief of staff, the secretary of defense, the gathered Orbops personnel, as well as the PRNC observers. Then he launched right in—his speach was now back to normal.

  ‘‘The solution, coincidentally enough, lies in my own frontier work, the Stradivari Project.’’ He understood that he was immediately met with skepticism— they thought he was pushing his own agenda again. He hastened to correct this misconception. ‘‘On the Moon, before the Builders destroyed all my equipment, I was trying to generate something called anti-Ostrander space, a kind of curved space-time specific to hyperdimensionality first postulated by Dutch physicist William Ostrander back in 2055. In studying the effects of anti-Ostrander space on various particles, or at least looking at how these particles behaved in anti-Ostrander space, I hoped to come to a greater understanding of hyperdimensionality and how it might be used to explain some of the deeper and more perplexing mysteries of the universe. One of the difficulties in explaining cutting-edge physics is that it’s primarily expressed in mathematical language, and so to comprehend it through the analogs of the five human senses is nearly impossible. Often, to describe things to laymen, I must rely on metaphor and simile, and to do this I want to tell you about something that happened to me when I was a teenager. When I was fifteen, my father suffered a stroke. Part of his mind was permanently damaged and he couldn’t process his reality or his world in the same way anymore. He lost a great deal of his mental facility, and so you could say he was like a two-dimensional being trying to process a four-dimensional world, and that he simply didn’t have the necessary conduits or filters to make sense of much of what he saw. Taking that to the next level, human beings, as a whole, don’t have the filters to properly interpret, at least not without complicated and artificial mathematics, the presumed hyperdimensionality of the Builders. For one reason or another, I’ve been given brief sensory glimpses of it. Inside Alpha Vehicle I saw the entire universe as if mapped out in a small oval; but it was more than just this sight analog. It was a feeling. And it was this feeling that has led me to the conclusion that the Builders are hyperdimensional.’’

  The president interrupted. ‘‘Yes, but what does hyperdimensionality mean?’’

  How to explain this to the president so he would understand. ‘‘It’s the potentiality of all things, all the time, all at once. Within the confines of anti-Ostrander space we find these properties. And it is within this kind of setting that I believe the Builders operate. I believe, based on the subjective corollaries the Builders have allowed me to experience, that they are in fact manipulating the nature of hyperdimensionality to achieve the effects we’re now seeing in our own sun. Which brings us to the primary reason we’re all gathered here today. Why are the Builders bleeding the hydrogen out of the sun and accelerating it into its red giant phase, and is there anything we can do to stop it?’’

  The room grew still as they waited for him to continue.

  He took a moment to collect his thoughts. ‘‘On the way here, I read Dr. Nolan Pratt’s most recent report. He’s now identified eleven other main sequence stars within the local Milky Way that have been kindled into red giants. Similarly, larger stars in more further-flung neighborhoods of the galaxy have been accelerated into supernovae. I wish I could answer the first part of the question, why the Builders are doing this, but I have no idea. Whatever the reason, it means the Builders have major engineering capability on a pan-galactic scale.’’ He turned to Leroy Congdon. ‘‘Which means we must conclude that from a military standpoint, we’re outmatched by a considerable margin, and that to even consider military action against them is, to say the least, counterproductive and, as Colonel Pittman’s unauthorized launch has shown, even dangerous. As I’ve said before, they could easily destroy Earth if they wanted to. If they traveled twelve million light-years instantaneously, bending time and space to do so, does anyone seriously doubt that they could crush us in seconds if that was their ultimate goal?’’

  He tried to keep the tone of reprimand out of his voice because he knew he was walking a political tightrope. He was glad to see that the president and the secretary responded with grim grace.

  Congdon, in his gospel baritone, said, ‘‘Colonel Pittman has been discharged from duty and is facing a military court-martial.’’

  The president said, ‘‘If not military action, then where’s that leave us? I don’t have to remind you that the political stakes are fairly high at this time.’’

  Cam nodded. ‘‘Yes, I know. And I understand that emphasis must be put on results of a concrete political and strategic nature. Which brings me back to my original work on anti-Ostrander space. If we upscale my Stradivari equipment, and place it at a calculated spot somewhere along the outflowing hydrogen spiral, we can reverse the hydrogen’s flow and send it back to the sun. The Stradivari equipment will create a large anti-Ostrander space field. By creating an array of a dozen or so generators—and by the way, the cost would be fairly cheap because we already have the Brookhaven designs—we could create a field large enough to slow and possibly reverse the hydrogen bleed.’’

  He glanced at the president. Would he buy it? And would the panel of backup scientists answering to him confirm it? The pugnacious little Langdon was staring at him now, and the president’s eyes reminded Cam of burning coals. Langdon glanced at Blunt. ‘‘General, does Orbops possess the necessary launch capability for the mission that Dr. Conrad is suggesting? And if so, how long will it take?’’

  Blunt stroked his small white goatee. ‘‘While our operations on the Moon have significantly reduced our lift potential
, we still have the resources for a launch of this nature. You’re looking at . . . twelve boosters, then, Dr. Conrad?’’

  ‘‘For the units themselves, yes, a dozen. We would need another five boosters for scientific, construction, and supervisory staff. If we went to full-scale production at the Henderson-Lang Orbiting Assembly Bay, and called in extra crews to work around the clock, I believe we could get the Stradivari generators finished in a month. When you take travel and installation time into account, we should have the whole system up and running by the end of September. Red giant effects, according to the Omega Sol equation, will culminate in early October, so that should give us a two-week margin. By that time, the system will be operational and pumping hydrogen back into the sun.’’

  One of the Chinese delegates had a question, and it came through the translation speaker overhead. ‘‘And how, exactly, is the Stradivari field supposed to send hydrogen back to the sun?’’

  Cam nodded. ‘‘As I previously mentioned, we hope to create a wide swath of anti-Ostrander space. The environment inside anti-Ostrander space is something that’s not well comprehended by lay people, but let me try my best to explain. If you were inside anti-Ostrander space, you would notice some extremely strange properties. For one thing, no matter where you were, you would feel like you were at the bottom of a gravity well. On Earth, you throw a ball up into the air, and it comes back to you. In anti-Ostrander space, you throw it to the right and the left, and even downward, and it would come back to you. In other words, all matter is boomeranged back to where it came from. If we made our own field continuous with the same field the Builders are using to drain the hydrogen, we’ll initiate a backflow.’’

  Brian Goldvogel spoke up, his tone skeptical. ‘‘If the Builders are as powerful as you say they are, what’s to stop them from blasting this new apparatus right out of the sky?’’

  Cam’s lower lip came forward and his eyebrows rose. Goldvogel was going to play the devil’s advocate, was he? All right. So be it. Time for the other side of the coin.

  ‘‘Nothing. If the Builders want to get rid of us, we ultimately can’t stop them. But there’s much evidence to suggest that they’re trying to understand exactly who we are. Some asked why did Alpha Vehicle come to Gettysburg when it finally wound up in Crater Cavalet, twenty-five kilometers away? It’s been suggested that my own presence at Gettysburg could have been a factor. And in view of the evidence thus far, my own work in Shenandoah might have had something to do with it. Remember, Stradivari Team was trying to create an anti-Ostrander environment, and day by day I grow more convinced that this is the exact kind of environment the Builders inhabit. In other words, they may have intuited some part of their own innate way of existence, and so they investigated. Unfortunately for everybody concerned, their moonfall inadvertently destroyed the bulk of our equipment.’’

  Goldvogel’s patience looked tried. ‘‘So you’re saying that all this could be a waste of time if the Builders don’t buy it?’’

  ‘‘I’m saying they still might try to communicate with us if we foster the right conditions. With a new Stradivari, we might further that cause. I think they’ve been trying to communicate with us all this time and are just having a hard time understanding us. We have many examples of their attempts. The Worldwide Crash, for instance. My own time inside Alpha Vehicle. The recent nuclear exchange.’’

  Goldvogel remained unconvinced. ‘‘What about Dr. Tennant’s second communications attempt. Alpha Vehicle murdered one Princeton Team member, and the others are presumed dead. I wouldn’t exactly call that communicating.’’

  ‘‘Have you read yesterday’s report on that?’’

  Goldvogel’s face reddened. ‘‘I’m afraid I haven’t.’’

  ‘‘The Builders left an interesting clue at the site of the second attempt, another example of a possible communication attempt, the grooves running parallel to each other on the Moon’s surface, the so-called runnels. We’ve now had all kinds of analysts study these grooves, including musicologists. The items sent in Dr. Tennant’s more comprehensive second attempt included, among other things, a recording of Mozart’s Fortieth Symphony in G Minor, Köchel 550. The musicologists have established precise relationships between the Moon grooves and many notational aspects of Mozart’s Fortieth. They say it’s as if the Builders tried to respond to Mozart’s symphony with a notational idiom that reflected the composer’s work. This further supports the notion that the Builders are trying to communicate with us, and leads me to believe that they’re trying to discern our precise nature. If we promote the right conditions we might make a breakthrough.’’

  The president spoke up. ‘‘But why are they trying to discern our precise nature? If they’re just going to fry us in our own sun, why would they care?’’

  ‘‘Because as they are alive themselves, they recognize the value of life.’’

  Oren Fye’s voice was hard. ‘‘Considering that over three hundred thousand died in the Worldwide Crash—considering all the damage and death caused by Hurricane Delilah, not to mention the nuclear exchange, and the four murdered Princeton Team members—’’

  Cam raised his hands, preempting Fye’s objections. ‘‘I believe it’s a matter of priorities for the Builders. We can assume that because several other local stars have been accelerated into their end-stage phases, the Builders’ specific intentions don’t necessarily focus on Earth. We don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, but they must have a reason. And maybe the reason outweighs the preservation of a species like our own. I think the essentials for the Builders lie in a single question: ‘Why should we bother saving you when we have much greater things at stake?’ I believe we touched on this hypothesis in our last meeting.’’

  The notion still had a sobering effect on everybody.

  ‘‘Do you have any further guesses on that?’’ asked John Gielgud. ‘‘I mean, what would they have at stake?’’

  ‘‘I still don’t know. But considering how vast their engineering project seems to be, I think it goes way beyond our petty concerns here on Earth. In my own contact with them, I’ve sensed this. At the same time, I realize that they’ve divined something in us. They’ve tried to establish the exact parameters for what they’ve seen in us. They’ve tried to reach us by various means of communication we haven’t fully comprehended. Let’s be thankful that with the recent nuclear exchange, despite the casualties, they seem to be trying again. With an upscaled Stradivari attempt, we just might encourage further overtures.’’ He shrugged. ‘‘And we’ll just have to hope that any new dialogue isn’t as destructive as previous ones.’’

  PART THREE

  The Wreckers

  24

  As such things went, Pittman’s cell was spacious, and included a small bedroom and office. He had computer access and tried to find out everything he could about the nuclear strike against Philadelphia, but there wasn’t much. The Army was keeping tight wraps on the outflow of information about the disaster. He tried to get through to Sheila and the kids, but most of the Bell Atlantic grid was down, and the air was too thick with radiation, both from the nuclear strikes and the Builder-molested sun, for cell phones to work.

  He did, however, get through to his lawyer, Gary Starling, who lived in Las Vegas—close-range cell phones seemed to be working—and explained his situation. He needed to get out of here. He had to go to Philadelphia. It wasn’t only his worry and love that was driving him. Alpha Vehicle was in his mind now, and it was telling him to go.

  Starling agreed to represent him. ‘‘I’ll have my assistants dig around for precedents.’’

  As he sat in his cell at Peterson Air Force Base with the Bleed’s eye-smarting light coming through his window, he found a new piece of information. For Philadelphia, the PRNC targeting mechanism had malfunctioned by seven percent, and detonation had occurred three kilometers east of the city across the Delaware River in south Jersey. This meant his ex-wife and family had three more kilometers of
buffer, and this bolstered his hopes greatly.

  He tried to gain access to Greenhow for satellite imagery, but his old passwords were now void. So he attempted to Google Philadelphia through Google Earth, but the Philadelphia shots were old file ones, taken three days before the strike, and all the familiar streets were still intact.

  Starling, an older man, tall, fond of Italian suits, came for their first face-to-face three days later.

  ‘‘There’s an old incommunicado provision I found on the books. The Brazil Engagement.’’ Pittman became appropriately solemn at Starling’s mention of the bloodiest jungle conflict ever, particularly because it was the war his father had died in. ‘‘Colonel Robert F. Spencer was isolated in the Roosevelt River Basin in March of 2103. Brazilian forces had taken out his communications, destroyed all his supply dumps, and his men were running short of food and succumbing to disease. He had in his arsenal two tactical nuclear weapons, and the standing order stipulated he could fire them only with the consent of his superior officer, General Dennis Drayna. But as he was incommunicado, and in dire straits, he fired the larger of the two without that consent so he could break the Brazilian stranglehold. The military arrested him the moment he got back to battalion, but his defense attorney got him acquitted using the incommunicado defense. So we have an extremely strong precedent in Spencer vs. the USMC, and I think it will stand.’’

  Up against Spencer vs. the USMC, the prosecutorial offensive didn’t get much beyond the pretrial stage, and the insubordination charge was dropped. They let Pittman go after four weeks. Right around the same time, he learned that Dr. Conrad and a crew of scientists had gone on a mission dubbed Guarneri, and that they were now trying to communicate with the Builders using techniques of hyperdimensionality pioneered during Stradivari. They were somewhere between the orbital planes of Earth and Venus, attempting to negotiate a last-minute reprieve. And that was good, because reports kept coming in about how the Van Allen belts were shredding because of the bloating sun, and unrestricted radiation was reaching the Earth in ever greater amounts, and that time was generally running out for everybody.