Strands (Maura's Gate Book 4)

by Rawsontile, Fiona

  “He said they won’t talk to us?” asked Lamar.

  “It sounded like they too are in trouble.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Lamar left them and sat at a desk where his paper roll was spreading out.

  Devin could no longer suppress his curiosity. “What’s Grandpa studying?” he asked Korina.

  “He asked me to print out a map of—”

  “Come over! I found something,” Matt called from the navigation desk.

  The others gathered in front of the monitors. The same horizontal cylinder, but its surface was crippled. Small items orbited the strand a few hundred miles from the surface, according to the numbers shown alongside. Devin knew items of that size didn’t emit measurable gravitons; they were detectable because their presence disturbed the gravitational waves coming from the strand. Were those satellites and space stations?

  “What’s the plan?” he heard Matt asking.

  Devin tapped on the touch screen and started typing numbers. “Harass them.”

  Chapter 3 The Other World

  “Are you sure we’re being watched?” Matt asked.

  Outside the window, space was a black curtain with incomprehensible distances between even the closest stars. Meanwhile, the ship was gliding on the surface of STR-OX103, presumably whooshing through invisible buildings, highways, mountains, and people.

  “Yes,” Devin said, given the fact that Philip was sent here last night even before the ship approached them. “And they could be recording our conversations.” He tried to keep a straight face as Matt and Korina looked around suspiciously.

  “What got me interested in particle physics.” Lamar’s words came from his desk. “Was my great grandmother’s saying—small things have power over the large.”

  “I wonder what they look like.” The girl must be drinking her fifth Pepsi of the day. “Hopefully not too creepy.”

  Her words made Devin realize that, despite his direct and indirect encounters with aliens in the past, he had never seen an authentic appearance.

  “According to Professor McGuinn,” Matt said, “their physical form shouldn’t be too different from ours.”

  “Oh right!” Devin asked, “How did the talk go?”

  Last year NASA invited Roland McGuinn, the retired astrobiology professor, to give a seminar after he received the Bailey Award. Devin happened to have a knee surgery at the same time. They had promised to send him a video afterwards, but nobody followed up.

  Matt leaned forward, his face glowing. “Well, the basic argument was, did life on Earth originate from one cell, or multiple cells of the same type? When we look at star formations, a certain amount of nebular gases and dust will give birth to a certain type of star. There are physical laws behind it. If life is part of the physical world, why should it be exceptional? Under the same condition, its occurrence should be deterministic.”

  “But there are all kinds of animals,” Korina said.

  “That’s true,” Matt said to her. “But to become the intelligence that dominates a planet, you really don’t have many options. For example, you don’t slither like a snake or walk with four limbs, because hunting shouldn’t be your priority, and the decency of your race requires upright postures. You have fingers, not fins, to perform more sophisticated tasks, like typing on a computer. If the planet is dimmer than Earth, your eyes might be larger, but you need two to form binocular vision.”

  Korina nodded. “To develop intelligence, you must live long enough to receive education and conduct scientific research. Therefore, your reproductive system shouldn’t be too powerful since you need to control the number of descendents.”

  “Interesting.” Devin reclined his chair and stared at the ceiling. When he was off mission, he often lay in the yard of his house at night in a similar way. With his vision filled with the star field, he got an illusion of going back to space. “Extending that logic, how much freedom do we truly have in creating history? All the extraordinary individuals, the sagas and mistakes, scientific discoveries that seemed to have come out of sheer luck … Was the pathway to our modern world as predictable as a star’s formation?”

  The ship jolted as if it stumbled over something. Matt leapt up and checked the warning signals on the monitors. “Strange …”

  Even without reading the system’s report, Devin could tell the ship had notably slowed down. The poor engine was still trying to perform its job, beeping, trembling, swimming in a swarm of unknown forces, until all the motions had stopped. They waited. Like in the moment following a flash of lightning, one expected something more vehement to come.

  But silence dragged, and soon Devin found the others staring at his body.

  “What’s going on with you?” Korina asked.

  Devin looked down at his body and saw a blue light glowing out of his skin and uniform. “Is this just me? I don’t …”

  Before he finished the sentence, he instantly lost his consciousness the way a light bulb was unplugged from the power. What came to him next was darkness, not a pitch black but a noisy blankness that swirled and squirmed at various spatial points. Then there came the falling—a free fall caused by a force weaker than Earth’s gravity.

  Bang!

  * * *

  “Did you send Philip for the glasses?” A voice came through the dark. Aside from the fact that it was an unusually low pitch, something else was strange with that sound, as if it had gone through a voice transformer.

  “Yes, honey.” That sounded like a normal human, and possibly one from the Southern United States. “He should be back soon.”

  Devin’s hands skimmed on a moist and sodded surface. He was lying on his back with his eyes open, but the world remained lightless. As the wind blew, the ground swayed up and down like a ship floating on an ocean.

  He pushed himself up to a sitting position. His buttocks still ached due to the fall, and he felt mildly disoriented. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. … uh, what’s your name?” the first voice asked. Despite the low pitch, the tenderness made Devin believe it was a “woman”.

  “Devin Lee. A NASA astronaut. Where am I?” It was unsettling not being able to see the surroundings.

  “You should know it.” The regular voice was stern. “You came to talk to us, didn’t you?”

  Devin’s fingers involuntarily poked the ground. If he could feel the strand, there was only one explanation. “Am I dark?”

  The low voice giggled. “Why do they call us dark? I’ve always thought I live in a bright world.”

  “What do you want?” the man asked.

  The hostility was discouraging, but Devin had to proceed. “We are hoping you could help us.”

  “After you have decided not to trust us?”

  “Honey …” The woman consoled.

  “When we visited Earth twelve years ago, we took a bunch of humans to the nearby planet, and left a message telling your government about the upcoming disaster, as well as the location of the planet. Since then, we’ve been expecting to see massive migrations. Barring a few scientists, nobody showed up for years.”

  Blood rushed to Devin’s head. So … so the government knew it even before Rose discovered the hidden chamber? He couldn’t believe it! But that explained the media’s silence when those people disappeared.

  “Mrs. Tailor, the glasses are here.”

  Devin recognized the young voice from behind—Philip, the boy who visited his cabin last night. Then something cold touched his face, and immediately his eyes were filled with light. Wow, what a blazing world! He was sitting on the lawn of a garden, or a backyard with no house. The man and the woman were looking at him from a garden bench straight ahead. Next to them stood a table and a metal structure that resembled a charcoal grill. Everything was radiant with bright colors, yet it was difficult to distinguish them, as light seemed to have come from every angle with no shadow casted. He looked up the sky and saw a uniform ivory. Where was the light source?

  “Thanks,
Philip,” said the woman. “There are cookies in the kitchen.”

  At first sight, she looked like a Latino—dark-olive skin, plump cheeks, thick straight hair covering the upper half of her sturdy back. She was short, at most four and a half feet. Her ears were twice as large as a normal human’s, while her pupils were small and cloudy. The guy sitting at her side was probably a few years older than Devin, with gray hair, gray beard, and a white shirt contrasting his black skin. Devin couldn’t see his eyes behind a similar pair of sunglasses.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Lee?” the woman asked.

  Devin realized he was still on the ground. Nodding, he came to his feet and sat on the bench nearby. Meanwhile, he caught a glimpse of Philip entering underground.

  “Then a few years ago.” The man resumed his account. “The planet suddenly became busy. There came all kinds of construction groups. They chopped down forests, reclaimed raw land, built power plants and decent apartments. Apparently, those who plan to move here are not going to live in caves or drink unfiltered water. I just wonder—how many people can those facilities accommodate? A few millions?”

  Now Devin understood the man’s bitterness. The government had been warned more than a decade ago, but they either didn’t believe it or couldn’t agree upon a plan. Only after Devin’s Jupiter trip had confirmed the bad news did they begin taking action, which was to prepare a new Earth for a small number of citizens, while getting the public ready for mind transferring. I still got a few cousins in California … I don’t think they can afford it. Maybe the government had already sold a bunch of “tickets”.

  Fine, he had enough. Devin stood up. He had done his part, more than he was supposed to do. Now all he cared was to go back to his family and let people know the truth.

  “Feeling betrayed?” The woman smiled broadly. “Calm down, Mr. Lee. By the way, I’m Lori. This is my husband, Malik.”

  The man nodded, his expression softening a little.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help.” Lori continued. “You know why we live underground in the suburban area?”

  “Too much light?” Devin sat back.

  Lori shook her head. “There’s light down there. It’s because Axon vibrates.”

  “Axon?”

  “I mean …” Her thumb pointed at the ground. “This. I don’t know what you call it. There is an official name, but only in our language.”

  “Strands.”

  “Strands? Anyway, like neurons’ axons, they communicate with one another. We still don’t fully understand the mechanism, but we know in the deep core something flows fast.” She looked into the distance. “You can’t see it, but every half light year or so there is a growth point, where dark matter in the surrounding space is sucked in to support the expansion of an Axon.”

  Devin browsed the land covered with gardens, jungles, and farms. The leaves on the bushes and trees were ball or olive shaped, possibly because light came from all directions. Occasionally the land would rise to form hillocks like the one they were sitting on top of, but overall it stayed flat, until it reached the horizon that curved downward on his left and right and upward on the front and back. It must be crowded underground, he thought, with all the stores, schools, trains, and homes.

  “You said they talk to one another. How?”

  “They exchange fluid,” Malik said, “at intersections. Some scientists say, there are special particles traveling inside the fluid at the speed of your light.”

  “Like optical fibers?” Devin smiled.

  Malik shrugged. “That’s how the universe conveys information securely, they think, instead of using scattered light as in your world.”

  “What kind of information?”

  Devin couldn’t see Malik’s eyes behind the glasses, but he could feel the squinting.

  “To properly set up space and … and time.”

  Devin shook his head. Particle physics! Did it really underlie every phenomenon in the universe? The fact that space-time was curved by gravity and gravity was conveyed by gravitons did seem to support the argument. On the other hand, could someone explain his mind using bosons and waves? Were human beings no more than a puddle of particles?

  He tried to focus on practical issues. “What happens when an Axon breaks?”

  “They would tear at the growth points,” said Malik. “Fluid and particles would spray out into a layer that may extend over several astronomical units. It’s no good news if any of your planets will go through it.”

  Maura’s Gate.

  “And it’s no good news for us,” said Lori, “even though we don’t live on your Axon. Right now the ground is relatively stable, since it’s not far from an intersection—that’s the downtown area; property tax goes way up as you approach it. Once your Axon is gone, our world would be left hanging. A vibration that matches the Axon’s resonance frequency could be dangerous. For that reason, some of our elite citizens have left, and more are leaving.”

  “But at our age we don’t want to move,” Malik said, exchanging looks with his wife. “We’ll be fine, as long as we are careful. Philip and Korina should be done with college by that time.”

  The three of them stayed quiet for a while. Then Lori said apologetically, “As you see, if we had the ability to solve your problem, we would’ve fixed it for our own sake. The only thing we could do for you is watch over those living on Planet Oasis. When they need a hand, we’ll do our best.”

  “I understand.” Devin rose from the bench. “Thank you and your people for the help. I need to go back soon.” And revisit Jupiter to discuss with Lionel about the mind-transferring process. However he blamed on the government, he knew it was impractical to transport all the humans here.

  The couple also stood up. “Let me operate the device this time,” Malik said.

  “How did you turn me into …” Devin tried to avoid the word, dark, but failed to come up with a better one.

  “I don’t know.” Lori shrugged. “Malik and I used to run a bakery. After the government left, since Malik is a human and I’m a half-blood, we took over the local Bureau of Human Affairs. We actually wanted to bring here Lamar …” She smiled. “But I wasn’t trained with that machine and you came down instead.”

  Devin looked at the couple in turn. “So humans have been here for a while?”

  “Long before I know,” Lori said. “But not too many. In the old days, they wore glasses all the time. Now young people like Philip can get implanted contacts through eye surgeries.”

  Malik walked to the center of the yard where Philip had disappeared. Before he stepped downstairs, he turned in Devin’s direction. Something subtle about him had changed. “I came here with my father when I was fifteen, after mother left us … He was an introvert, a great baker. Used to be a violinist, though. Said he wished he could continue to play.”

  Malik’s words reminded Devin of his great uncle, who was also a violinist.

  “Well … good luck,” Malik said and entered underground.

  Devin and Lori smiled at each other and waited. Wind was blowing gently. He looked up the sky and wondered where the ship, now invisible to him, was parked. Then a question came to his mind. “If you can’t see our stars, what illuminates your world?”

  “Light is emitted by Axon, trapped in the air, and reflected on the surface of every item. The part of an Axon will dim if it doesn’t get enough dark-matter supply from the nearby space. Philip recently visited your Axon. It looked awful.”

  Devin remembered Lamar’s theory. “Where does the supply come from?”

  “Black holes.”

  The answer stroke Devin hard. Why didn’t he think of this earlier? “Actually,” he said, “we might be able to solve the problem ourselves.”

  Lori stared at him in bewilderment. Devin’s body was radiating blue light, but he managed to finish the next sentence before the world vanished from his view.

  “And we might be able to help you.”

  Chapter 4 The Nestnut<
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  Korina peered at the outside one more time. A quiet and boundless universe, with stars and galaxies so far apart as if they had nothing to do with one another. Was there really an invisible world, of which she would soon become a part?

  “Devin! Thank god you are back!” Matt shouted.

  She turned around and saw the light fading from Devin’s body. “Did you see Philip this time?” she asked, but her voice was buried in a stream of inquiries.

  “I’ll fill you in on the details later,” Devin pleaded with the crowd. “Let me ask you a question first, Lamar. You told me black holes provide filaments with dark matter. Are there currently no black holes to support our strand?”

  “There were probably a couple of small ones some decades ago.”

  “How large does it need to be?” Matt asked.

  “I don’t know for sure. Nobody has verified my equations. If I’m right, we’ll need something bigger than seven solar masses. With a black hole of that size, 102 should be extended enough to hold on for a dozen years. After that, there may or may not be other supplies, but that’s not what we need to worry about.”

  “Seven solar masses …” Devin sat down in a couch and scratched his gray hair. “Do you think we can create one?”

  Korina did a quick calculation. She remembered Grandpa telling her that Earth’s sun weighed about three hundred thousand times of Earth. Planet Oasis was slightly larger than Earth. So seven solar masses would mean roughly two million of their home planet!

  “Grandpa,” Korina called him gently. “It’s gonna be a huge black hole, then.”

  Grandpa smiled. “No, it’s a tiny, tiny one. The one residing at the center of Milky Way weighs four million solar masses.”

  Korina stuck out her tongue.

  Grandpa sat at Devin’s side and handed him the map. “I’ve marked all the neutron stars that are potential candidates.”

  “You did?” Devin snatched the paper roll and unwrapped it. “Terrific! Thought I would have to wait until we get home.”

  Korina edged over to Grandpa. “What are neutron stars?”