“Thanks for calling, Colonel,” she began.
He nodded slowly. “Well, you did extend an invitation I couldn’t refuse. The great Kira Miller. Since I consider you to be the most remarkable woman who ever lived, having the chance to speak with you in person is impossible to pass up under any circumstances.”
“Remarkable for my accomplishments? Or remarkable for what you think is the blackness in my soul?”
“Both,” admitted Jake without hesitation. “By the way, how did you discover my name?”
“Lucky guess,” said Kira.
The corners of Jake’s mouth turned up into the hint of a smile, which quickly vanished. “Look,” he said, knowing that pressing this question further wouldn’t get him anywhere, “I’m on camera like you asked. How about letting me see who I’m talking to? It seems only fair.”
Kira shook her head. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that life isn’t always fair?”
Jake frowned, but she could tell he wasn’t surprised by her response. “Nice trick getting Admiral Hansen to contact me,” he said. “But for someone of your capabilities, far less surprising to me than it was to him.”
“Did you tell him what this is about?”
“Of course,” replied Jake immediately.
On the bottom of Kira’s screen two words appeared. He’s lying.
She glanced at Jim Connelly inside the enhancement room, who was watching Jake and monitoring the conversation on his own screen, and nodded her thanks. They had timed things so Connelly would be enhanced throughout the call, diverting a tiny portion of his amplified focus to act as a human lie detector.
Those who were enhanced learned immediately that they could read the combination of facial expressions, body language cues, and vocal intonation in normals so well they could predict what they would say next with an accuracy that bordered on mind reading. And as far as determining the truth or falsehood of anything a normal actually vocalized, their accuracy was absolute.
Kira welcomed learning Jake’s statement was a lie. The last thing she wanted was for the Admiral to be brought up to speed and enter the game.
“So let’s cut to the chase,” said Jake. “What can I do for you?”
“I believe you’re holding a few friends of mine.”
“Friends? Plural? My understanding from the one friend I’m holding is that the other one is more than just a friend. Word is you’re in love with him.”
Kira’s heart ached just thinking about David Desh, but she couldn’t afford the slightest sentimentality. “Really?” she said. “Can a person with a soul as black as you think mine is fall in love?”
“In their own fashion, maybe. I understand that even Adolf Hitler had a girlfriend.”
Kira sighed in frustration. “I trust both Seth and David are in good health?”
“Desh is still unconscious and hasn’t been touched. Rosenblatt couldn’t be healthier.”
A message scrolled onto her screen faster than she could read, put there by someone with superhuman typing skills.
He’s hedging. Rosenblatt is fine physically, but Jake is worried about his psychological state after the stunt with this daughter. He continues to feel quite guilty about that, and regrets the damage he felt forced to inflict on someone he believes is an innocent man.
How fucking pathetic, added Connelly coldly, an editorial sentiment that his normal self would never have shared.
Jake’s eyes narrowed and he checked his connection, no doubt wondering why Kira was taking so long to respond.
“The reason I wanted you to contact me,” continued Kira finally, having finished reading Connelly’s note, “is to propose a trade.”
“A trade?”
“That’s right. Me for the two of them.”
As good a poker player as Jake was, he couldn’t hide his surprise.
He expected you might bribe or threaten him to attempt to get them back, but he never expected this, wrote Connelly unnecessarily. His mind is racing, weighing the offer, weighing possibilities, with a high level of excitement.
“I give up two prisoners and I only get one in return?” said Jake, sounding almost bored. “Doesn’t sound like a fair trade to me.”
Kira laughed out loud. “Come off it, Colonel. Either we deal with each other honestly or I’m rescinding the offer and hanging up.”
The corners of Jake’s mouth turned up once again into the slightest of smiles. “Okay,” he said. "I won’t deny it. I’m interested.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m just having trouble believing you’d really put yourself in my custody.”
“Believe it,” said Kira. “But I need something from you. I need your absolute assurance on a few matters. Your word of honor.”
Jake looked at the screen in disbelief. “You can’t be serious. My word of honor? Why would you possibly believe anything I told you?”
“I’m a good judge of character, Colonel. If you give me your word, that’s good enough for me.”
He doesn’t believe this for an instant, but sees no point in arguing further.
“Okay,” said Jake. “I’m listening.”
“First, I want your assurances that you’ll let me live once I’m in your custody. Don’t answer immediately. Think it through. Be absolutely sure you’re willing and able to honor your commitments before giving your word.”
Jake pursed his lips in thought for an extended period. “I won’t kill you,” he said finally. “You have my word. But I won’t promise anything else. And if you resist or try to escape, all bets are off.”
He’s telling the truth, typed Connelly. His plan was always to kill you—just to be sure the threat he thinks you pose is nullified—but he’ll honor his word now that he’s given it. His new plan is to interrogate you thoroughly and then lock you away in a high-security cell for the rest of your life.
“That’s acceptable,” said Kira Miller to the colonel. “Second. I need your word that you won’t interrogate Desh when he regains consciousness and that no harm will come to either prisoner.”
Jake considered again and then finally nodded. “You have my word,” he said.
He’s telling the truth.
“Finally,” said Kira, “I want your word that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain. That if I give myself up, you’ll let Desh and Rosenblatt go, in perfect health, and not try to follow them. And neither will any of your men. Or your satellites. Think very carefully about this one, Colonel.”
Jake paused, and rubbed the back of his head, as though this would help in the thinking process. “Okay,” he responded finally. “You have my word. If you give yourself up—which I’m still not convinced you’ll do—I’ll release them in perfect health. And I won’t have them followed.”
He’s telling the truth, but he’s trying to deceive you in his own way. Good for him. I didn’t think this giant pussy had it in him, wrote enhanced Connelly callously. He’ll let them get away, but he’ll use what he gets out of you to do everything in his power to recapture them as soon as possible.
Kira caught Connelly’s eye and nodded. This was good enough for her.
“I’m counting on you to be a man of honor, Colonel, and not decide later to go back on your word.”
“I won’t,” said Jake.
He won’t, typed Connelly. But he still doesn’t believe you really trust his word. He’s convinced he’s missed something. So he’ll be exceedingly cautious and prepared for anything.
“While we’re at it,” added Jake. “How about giving me your word that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain.”
“What prompted that?” asked Kira. “My word means nothing to you, and we both know it.”
Jake smiled. “You have a point. Even if I thought I could trust you, I’m a firm believer in the trust-but-verify process anyway.”
“Don’t worry,” said Kira. “I won’t jeopardize my friends. You’ll have me on a platter.” She paused. “But I do have one other condition before I agree to the trade. Once this
is met, you can call back in thirty minutes and we can hash out the details of the, um . . . personnel exchange.”
Jake’s expression was easy for Kira to read, even without Connelly’s help. He had been thinking this was too easy, and he expected this final condition to be an unpleasant surprise that would mean she had no intention of giving herself up, and that this had been an elaborate tease for unknown reasons. “Go on,” he said guardedly.
“I need you to tell Seth Rosenblatt that little Jessica is alive and well. That what he saw was concocted by your special effects wizards.”
Jake’s eyes widened.
He’s wondering how you have any fucking idea that this happened. There was a pause. Now he’s putting it all together. He’s figured out you must have been listening in, although he can’t imagine how you pulled it off.
“Gladly,” said Jake at last.
“Then we have an agreement,” said Kira. “Go talk to Seth.”
Jake nodded. “I’ll call you back in thirty minutes.”
18
Madison Russo could barely breathe. She had never suffered from stage fright before and was comfortable in front of large crowds, but in addition to the many hundreds of reporters in the massive convention center ballroom, well over a hundred million more were watching on TV.
She had sent her findings out to the gravitational wave astronomy community at the speed of the Internet. This was too important to wait, even until morning. Within hours her findings had been confirmed at a dozen centers around the world.
The governments of almost every nation instinctively tried to suppress the data. After all, information this explosive needed to be analyzed endlessly before a determination could be made if the hapless citizenry could handle it. But governments quickly realized that the genie was out of the bottle and there was no way to cram it back in. They’d have better luck trying to stop the eruption of an active volcano with their bare hands.
As it was, Madison’s discovery caused sleepless nights around the world and a flurry of activity the likes of which had never been seen. If the entire Earth were an anthill, her findings had just kicked it like a planetary-sized boot, and seething masses of its inhabitants were scurrying every which way.
Dr. Eugene Tobias, the head of NASA, was at the podium first. Across the world similar press conferences were taking place, headed by government officials and scientific luminaries. In the United States, dozens of politicians and scientists had jockeyed all night to be the featured speaker, but since one of their own scientists had taken the shot heard ‘round the world—which wasn’t surprising since the majority of work in this field was being done in America—Madison Russo was the obvious, and fair, choice. Also because she was still a grad student, it would make the press conference less formal and intimidating, and enhance the human interest angle.
Most of the untold millions tuning in already knew of her discovery, of course, at least the punch line, but this was the first formal announcement. Panicked speculation and rumors had gone viral almost as quickly as had the discovery.
Eugene Tobias stood at the microphone until the audience chatter gradually ceased. When the room was silent, he began. “As many of you are now aware, at 10:23 Pacific Standard Time last night, a graduate student at the University of Arizona named Madison Russo made a discovery that has shaken the foundation of science, cosmology, and religion. Indisputable evidence of not just extraterrestrial life, but of intelligent extraterrestrial life. This discovery has now been repeatedly confirmed.” A thirty foot image of Tobias also appeared on a screen behind him, so those in the back could detect his every facial expression.
“I will now ask Miss Russo to make a brief, prepared statement. She will be followed by Dr. Timothy Benari, an expert in something called zero point energy. He will make a prepared statement as well. Then we will introduce our full panel and open up the floor for questions.” He gestured to Madison. “The microphone is all yours.”
Madison approached the lectern in flats and a dark suit, consisting of a pencil skirt and matching jacket. She hated formal wear and found the outfit restricting and uncomfortable. But if there was ever a time to dress formally, headlining a press conference in front of most of America was probably it. She adjusted the microphone and cleared her throat.
“Hello,” she croaked, and to her own ears her voice sounded tiny and meek. “As Dr. Tobias said,” she continued, managing to increase her volume despite the trouble she was having taking in oxygen, “my name is Madison Russo. Before I describe my findings, I thought it was important to give a quick—and I hope painless—review of Einstein’s theory of relativity.”
She half expected to hear a unanimous groan from the crowd of reporters. She hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours, so didn’t entirely trust her judgment, but while everyone had heard of relativity, she guessed that few non-scientists fully understood its implications. Or how profoundly it had turned mankind’s intuitive sense of how the universe worked upside down.
She smiled nervously. “Naturally, this will be a huge oversimplification. But relativity is critical to understanding the discovery that Dr. Tobias spoke of.
“So here is a three minute course. Suppose I threw a ball twenty miles per hour at a boy racing away from me on a bike, also going twenty miles per hour. How fast would the ball gain on him? The answer is, it wouldn’t. Relative to the boy, the ball would be going at zero miles per hour. If he was racing toward me at twenty miles per hour, the ball I threw would be closing the gap at forty miles per hour.”
Madison looked out over the audience to see how the reporters were reacting, but they might as well have been made of stone. “So relative velocities are just a matter of addition and subtraction,” she continued. “Pretty simple, and true for every object ever measured.” She paused. “But then light came along. It travels at an incomprehensible speed of 670 million miles an hour. And as impossible as it seems, it doesn’t obey this simple rule. The speed of light measured by an observer is exactly the same, no matter how fast he or she is moving toward it or away from it. If you were traveling at ninety-nine percent the speed of light, and chasing a beam of light, it would still be moving away from you at the full speed of light.”
She turned a page of notes and continued. “This would be like being in car going fifty-nine, chasing a car going sixty, and the car you’re chasing is still gaining on you at sixty miles an hour. Just as fast as it would if you were standing still. Seems impossible, and defies common sense. Newtonian physics couldn’t explain it. Fortunately, Albert Einstein developed a physics that could.”
Madison paused for just a moment and looked out at the sea of reporters. They still could have been made of wood for all the interest they were showing. Oh my God, she thought. I’m boring an entire nation to death. Her throat tightened, and breathing became even more difficult. But there was no turning back now.
“Einstein devised a theory and set of mathematics to account for light’s strange behavior,” she continued, forcing the words out. “According to him, speed changes everything. As objects get faster, to an unmoving observer, they shrink in length and increase in mass. At just a hair away from light speed, an object’s length would be very near zero. And its mass would approach infinity. And time would slow down for it as well. If you traveled very near the speed of light for just a few minutes—at least for you—a million years could have passed for your sister on Earth.”
Madison could tell from the body language of the room that interest in the subject matter was growing.
“Pretty mind-blowing stuff. And it seems totally crazy. But Einstein’s predictions have now been proven over and over again. Particles that decay at one rate when they’re slow, take far longer to decay when traveling near the speed of light. Precisely as the equations of relativity predict. Even GPS satellites are corrected for relativistic effects using Einstein’s equations. The reason these effects seem so ridiculous to our intuition is that they only take place at insane speeds, far fas
ter than anything on earth can travel.
“Einstein also provided a new take on gravity. He realized spacetime is like a trampoline, which is dented by any object with mass. Put a bowling ball in the center of a trampoline and it causes an indentation, so that anything else you put on it wants to roll downhill toward the ball. This is gravity. When a mass indents spacetime it sends out gravitational waves at the speed of light. Until very recently, these were all but impossible to detect. But a new theory has arisen which has allowed for super sensitive detection of these waves.
“My research gives me access to such a detector. I designed software to sift through billions of pages of gravitational wave data from endless masses, big and small. From asteroids to planets to suns. My software crunches this data and alerts me if it detects anything unusual.” She paused for effect. “And last night it did. It detected a mass the size of our moon in interstellar space, in the plane of the ecliptic, hurtling towards us from the direction of galactic center. Dr. Tobias has provided the exact coordinates in your information package.”
She paused and took a sip of water from a glass on the lectern. “Now a moon sized mass by itself isn’t all that interesting. But the mass of this object was falling precipitously as it went. First it was the mass of the moon. Then this moving object was only half as massive. Then only a fifth. Then a tenth. And so on.
“This made no sense at first. But then I remembered relativity. Remember that an object’s mass increases as it gets closer and closer to the speed of light. If an object were traveling very near the speed of light, and then began to decelerate, one would observe exactly what I had observed.
“But objects in interstellar space don’t travel anywhere near the speed of light. So I was sure I was mistaken. But when I drove this data through Einstein’s equations, it fit perfectly. Crosschecking its apparent mass at different time points and at different locations gives a precisely consistent picture mathematically. I’ll spare you the math, but the picture that emerged from the equations is as follows: a spherical object that, when not moving, would be roughly the size and weight of a small car, was traveling at greater than 99.99999 % of light speed. It then began braking smoothly. At its initial speed its apparent mass was huge, but as its speed fell its mass decreased dramatically.
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