New Title 1 (35 page)

Kris looked about the room. “No, but…” her voice trailed off, and she shrugged helplessly. Julian studied her face a few seconds more. Then he moved off, satisfied she was not lying to him. She was as confused as the rest of them.

“I have external camera feeds,” a technician promptly announced.

Julian turned in that direction. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” By the time he reached the workstation, the technician had an image on his screen. What appeared to be Earth, but redder and more distant, filled about half of the screen. Julian peered at the image, trying to make sense of it. “Is it a distortion? Why does it look smaller? Are we in a higher orbit?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the technician admitted. “None of my positioning data make sense.”

Julian glanced at the main workstation. “Can you transfer that to the main column?”

“Hold on,” the technician said, and after a moment working on his board, the main workstation’s display column flickered to life, displaying a larger, more detailed view of the image on the tech’s workstation. Julian approached it, as well as Aaron and Kris, while Reya kept it in her vision as she continued to speak over the com.

After an extended period staring at the globe below, Julian finally proclaimed, “That just can’t be Earth.”

“No, it isn’t.”

The voice, which emanated from across CnC, brought Julian and the others about. Dr. Jacqueline Silver, Dr. Calvin Rios, and Dr. Valeria Epstein stood at the entrance to CnC, peering about at the slowly-recovering chaos around them. Then they walked in, Dr. Silver in the lead, heading directly towards Julian.

Julian could see from Dr. Silver’s expression that she seemed to know something… although he wasn’t so sure of that from the faces of Calvin and Valeria. “Dr. Silver, do you know what’s going on? What happened to Earth?”

“I do,” Silver replied confidently. “And for the record, nothing ‘happened to’ the Earth.”

Julian glanced at the image in the column. “Then just what, exactly, am I looking at, Doctor?”

While Calvin and Valeria exchanged nervous glances, Dr. Silver just smiled. “This will take some time to explain. Why don’t we move to the conference room?”

~

The conference room just around the corner from CnC seemed crowded with all three doctors, Julian, Reya, Aaron and Kris inside. Everyone sat, and Dr. Silver seated herself on the opposite side of Reya from Julian.

“To begin with, Ceo,” Dr. Silver started, “I need to apologize for keeping everyone in the dark as I have. Only my assistant, Mr. Chiu, was fully aware of what we were working on from the beginning, and I kept my staff’s knowledge limited only to details of what pieces they were working on. Even Coo Hardy was not aware of the real nature of this project.”

Julian glared at Hardy, who blinked under his gaze. “Julian, I swear, it was supposed to be… everything she showed me…”

“We’ll deal with that later,” Julian said, and turned back to Dr. Silver, leaving Aaron to shrink into his seat. “Now, Doctor, tell me what you’ve done.”

“Simply put,” Dr. Silver replied, “I’ve gotten Verdant out of harm’s way, at least for the moment. We’ve managed to develop a new technology that has allowed us to get Verdant out of Earth orbit and our imminent crisis.”

“Out of orbit?” Julian demanded. “Impossible! Verdant doesn’t have the propulsive power to fly anywhere!”

“Very true,” Silver nodded. “We didn’t ‘fly’ anywhere. Nevertheless, we are no longer in Earth orbit.”

Julian followed what she was suggesting… but simply didn’t believe it. After turning the options over in his head, he finally said, “Bull! That’s Earth! Something’s happened to us, to our orbit…” he stared at Silver, who returned his gaze impassively. “You can’t be serious!”

“Yes, I am,” Silver replied. “That planet below us is not the Earth. It happens to be Mars.”

“Bullshit,” Reya muttered, and reached for a control panel on the conference table. A moment later, a wall screen activated, and displayed the planet that was displayed in CnC’s main column. They all stared at the planet below… and slowly, what didn’t make visual sense to them before, could now be seen clearly under a new light… they realized they were not looking at a reddish ash cloud blanketing the surface, but the surface itself… layers became shadows, and shadows became geologic features…

“Oh…
shit
,” Reya whispered.

Julian realized that Calvin and Valeria were also staring at the image, slack-jawed. “You two didn’t know, either?”

Calvin turned to Julian and shook his head. “Ceo, I’m sorry, but I had
no clue
. I thought Dr. Silver was trying to further her freight experiment, when I saw the equations…”

“What equations?”

Valeria volunteered, “The ones she had me working on, sir. I mean, they were similar to the freight project, but—”

“In fact,” Silver cut her off, “I had nine departments working on the supposed freight project. It just so happened that the nature of the experiment seemed so well-suited to a freight handling system, that it provided a good smokescreen to labor under. No one would have had any idea that the cover story was anything more than a blind… not my own people… or even Coo Hardy. I had originally hoped to have everything ready to present to you in just a few weeks. Unfortunately, the Yellowstone Caldera forced me to accelerate our timetable.”

Reya’s eyes bulged suddenly. “Are you telling us, this thing you did… it was
still experimental
?”

Dr. Silver put out a hand to calm her. “I promise, we ran full simulated life tests, and there were no problems—”

“Shit!” Reya heaved up out of her chair, her arms wrapping about her torso. “You used some experimental process to
move us to another planet!
” She turned to Julian. “Can I kill her now, please, before my arms fall off?”

“Get in line,” Julian said menacingly, and came up out of his chair. Dr. Silver swiveled her chair to follow him, and leaned back in barely-concealed alarm when he moved in her direction… until she realized he was heading for the door. “Everyone stay here!” he barked. Then he walked out of the conference room and around the corner into CnC.

When the staff saw him enter, they looked to him eagerly, hoping to get some answers to their questions. Judging by the look on a few of their faces, Julian suspected some of them were already figuring some things out. No wonder, he thought, as he glanced at the image of what he now knew to be the planet Mars, displayed in the main column.

Instead of answering their questions, however, Julian approached the technician at the tactical workstation. “Order in all outboard Wasps, immediately. Then open a frequency to those three Raptors. Tell them that the fight is over, and they have no base to return to. Tell them that we are clearing them to land on Verdant. Tell them they will not be considered prisoners of war, nor are they under arrest. Just convince them to come in before their air runs out. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” the technician nodded.

Julian returned the nod, then looked to the rest of CnC’s staff. “At the moment, we are all right,” he said clearly and deliberately. “Anyone calls and asks, tell them that we’re still trying to figure out what happened. As soon as things are clear to me, I’ll be passing that information on to you, and the rest of Verdant. Understood?” No one questioned him, and he nodded. “Carry on.”

He returned to the conference room to see Reya against the wall on the far side of the room, still looking angry and out-of-sorts. He went to Reya first. In a low voice, he asked, “Are you feeling all right?”

Reya glared at Dr. Silver as she spoke. “I want to
strangle
that
puta
! She
says
I’m fine, but…” She looked up at Julian. “I feel
violated
.”

Julian nodded. “On a lot of levels. I know. Try to relax. But if you feel ill, let me know immediately.” He started to lead her back to her chair, but she resisted, clearly wanting to remain where she was. After a moment, Julian relented, and returned to his chair.

“All right, Doctor,” he stated, “I think it’s time you explained to us how you managed to move us to another part of the solar system.”

“Well, strictly speaking, Verdant did not ‘move’,” Dr. Silver said. “‘Moving’ is a process of passing through physical space, from one location to another. In physical terms, we didn’t actually do that.”

After a moment, Julian said, “Congratulations, Doctor. You’ve lost me that fast.”

“I’m sorry,” Silver nodded, “but it’s a distinction that matters in terms of quantum mechanics, and the very reason we were able to do what we did. Our system is capable of manipulating the quantum translation of energy and matter.”

“Quantum…
translation
?” Julian repeated. “What is that?”

“It is the result of manipulating the quantum frequency and absolute orientation of an object,” Silver explained. “Doing so causes that object to translate its position in space to a different position.”

“Funny: It sure looks like we
moved
to me,” Reya grumbled from across the room.

Julian held up a hand in frustration, and turned to Calvin. “Dr. Rios, you’re supposed to be the expert at explaining complex science to laymen like us. I don’t suppose you’d care to give it a try?”

Calvin looked about the room balefully, and sighed. “Of course… though you understand that quantum mechanics isn’t my field of expertise, either.” He looked at Dr. Silver. “But I’ll explain what I can.”

“Please,” Julian urged.

Calvin nodded. “Well, to begin with: Quantum physics, or Quantum mechanics, is the science of what happens to the particles that make up atoms, their components, and things even smaller than that. Some of them are very familiar to us, like protons, neutrons and electrons. Other particles, like leptons, mesons and bosons, are largely inferred by experiment and theory. But that doesn’t prevent us from actually studying and manipulating them.

“In fact, our electronic and photonic systems are based on quantum effects that we have discovered through cause and effect, even though we can’t always see the actual particles in action. It’s a lot like not being able to physically see a train, but being able to infer its size, weight, movement and velocity based on data we collect along specific locations on the tracks. That’s how we delve into quantum mechanics.”

Julian nodded. “I follow. Go on.”

“Okay: It was discovered in the late-twentieth century that all matter and energy has a common quantum frequency, or vibration, known as alpha,” Calvin continued. “It’s theorized that the vibration is part of the process that binds matter and energy together, allowing us to exist as physical entities, and not just clouds of individual particles floating around everywhere. And it has been established that the quantum vibration exists everywhere in the known universe, essentially the glue making everything in our universe work.

“Now, in the early-twenty-first century, an interesting fact about the quantum frequency was discovered: Scientists realized that the alpha frequency was different in different parts of the universe. Further experimentation revealed that the difference in alpha was relatively uniform, from being the smallest wavelength in roughly the known center of the universe—the location of what we call the Origin Point—radiating more-or-less evenly outward to the largest wavelength, at the edges of the known universe. That means that the alpha of objects closer to the Origin Point is smaller than the alpha of objects further away.

“Now, if you listen to sound coming out of a speaker, you know that the sound is louder up-close, and quieter further away. It’s possible to measure the difference in sound in different locations, and estimate the level of sound you should encounter at any specific distance from the speaker. In the same way, with a careful examination of the cosmic background radiation, you can determine what the alpha of a particular radius from the Origin Point should be.”

Calvin paused there. “How am I doing?”

“Okay so far,” Julian told him.

“Good. Now, in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, scientists were trying to figure out how some of these quantum particles moved… because some of them didn’t seem to travel through space at all. Through experiments that generally used lasers to bombard these particles with excess energy, it was observed that these particles would seemingly disappear in one location, and reappear in another, but without actually moving through the physical space between.”

“Whoa,” Reya said. “If you don’t move through physical space… what was it, some kind of
other dimension
?”

“Some scientists theorized exactly that,” Calvin replied. “They thought the particles had entered and traveled through another type of space—they liked to call it ‘hyperspace,’ back then—”

“
Brane-Boy
stuff,” Reya moaned.

“—and they would come out of this ‘hyperspace’, back into our own space,” Calvin went on. “And in so doing, they had covered the distance between the two points faster than light could travel in real space, seemingly breaking the laws of relativity in the process, and sparking a brand new branch of theory that would be built on top of Einstein’s original Unified Theory… but, enough about that for now.”

Calvin took a deep breath, gauging his audience to make sure they were still with him. He glanced at Valeria and Dr. Silver, both of whom gave him encouraging looks.

“It took years of puzzling over how and why the particles seemed to jump from one point to the other,” Calvin continued. “Then it was discovered in the mid-twenty-first century that the particles had different quantum frequencies—alpha—before and after their jump. They determined that the energy from the lasers wasn’t, in fact, moving the particles at all; the lasers were actually altering the particle’s alpha, depending on their settings. Whenever that happened, the particle jumped.

“Now, since the particles weren’t actually moving through three-dimensional space, scientists didn’t like to refer to what they did as ‘movement’. For awhile they called the process ‘quantum tunneling’, even if they didn’t know what the particles were tunneling
through
. Eventually they determined that the change in alpha literally forced the particles to change their location to one that matched their new frequency. It didn’t actually
move
or
travel
there… it just
was
there, when it
used to be
here. These days, that is referred to as ‘quantum translation’.”