Outland (World-Lines Book 1) (5 page)

June 18              Bill

Bill glanced around the lab as he and Matt walked in. He noticed that the equipment now looked a lot more organized. Cable runs were shorter and had been wrapped into neat bundles. Components had been stacked. There even seemed to be fewer separate pieces of equipment.

“Looks a lot less like a yard sale,” Bill commented.

Richard was setting up the experiment, but this time he seemed to be doing most of it through the tablet. “Yeah, well, always looking to improve, right?” He shrugged. “I’ve managed to combine some functions. Matt’s last set of mods have made the control systems a lot more convenient. I’ve got some more ideas for modifications to the software as well. I’ll talk to Matt about that later.”

He turned. “Kevin, have you got the flipper?”

“A… flipper?” Bill said. “Wow, must be technical. Have you got a frammistan as well?”

Richard responded with a sigh and an eye roll. “We don’t know what else to call it. It’s a device that I put together to flip a coin after a few seconds. Kind of like the dice bubble in the old Trouble game.”

Kevin came back with something, which looked like a snow globe with a coin inside, and placed it in the cage. As before, he placed a video camera on a tripod in front of the gate to record the event and checked the other two cameras in the corners of the room.

“Okay,” Richard said. “Ready to go. Turn on the flipper.”

Kevin reached into the cage, flipped a small switch on the snow globe, and gave a thumbs up. “Thirty seconds to event.”

Richard made a few adjustments on his tablet and placed his finger just above an OK button. “Ready here.”

The seconds seemed to stretch forever while everyone watched. “Maybe we’ll go with a shorter interval next time,” Kevin muttered.

The snow globe gave a
pop,
and Bill jumped. The coin bounced off the plastic dome and landed as heads. Richard leaned forward and pushed the button he’d been hovering over.

Bill said, “Hold on to your butts.”

Everyone crowded around the monitor and looked at the image of the coin, which stubbornly insisted on showing heads. Richard muttered, tweaked a setting, and said, “Okay, how about now?”

“Uuuummmm,” Matt said, pointing. There were now two coins in the globe, one showing heads and one showing tails. “I had my eye on it the whole time,” he said. “It kind of faded in…”

Bill walked over to the device. Looking through the bars of the cage, he saw one coin, but when looking through the aperture, there were two.

Neat stuff!
he thought, stepping back to the monitor.

Without warning, there was a loud bang accompanied by something that felt like a bright flash, but without producing any light. Everyone jumped. After a few seconds, when nothing else happened, they moved to the table. The coin showed heads once again, even looking through the gate, and the assembly had jumped
across the table a few inches.

There was some nervous laughter, and Bill grabbed his chest and feigned a heart attack. Since there appeared to be no damage, everyone relaxed.

“Wow!” Bill said. “Either you guys are pulling off the practical joke of the century, or you’ve got something amazing here. I wonder how this would work out in Vegas? Can this be adapted to operate on roulette wheels? Maybe something portable and unobtrusive?”

Richard made an impatient gesture toward the monitor. “Let’s look at the video.”

They gathered around the monitor. Kevin pointed the remote at the camera and started the replay. They watched for the same interminable thirty seconds or so, punctuated by Kevin’s recorded background comment. The coin seemed to fade out of focus and then back in, but as two coins.

“Well, I’m feeling pretty smug,” Richard said, smiling.

Then the monitor showed the bang, flash, and movement of the whole assembly.

“So what the heck was that?” Matt asked.

“Don’t know,” Richard answered. “But it almost acted like it got pulled off focus. I’ll have a look at the logs later. I guess we need to tweak our design a bit.”

Richard frowned. “And, let’s keep this quiet okay? I do
not
want to have to share this, and I don’t want it to get out prematurely.”

He nodded in Matt’s direction. “Meanwhile, Matt and I will refine the control system so we can lock onto something and stay locked. Matt, I’ll send you an email with specs. Bill, I wonder if I could borrow your engineering skills again to build a bigger and more robust gate. Maybe
without
the decorations?”

“Well, how can I resist a request like that?” Bill said with a smile. “The engineering department isn’t quite as deserted as Physics—it turns out we’re bigger nerds than you guys— but I’m pretty sure I can get away with some more light, off-hours metalwork.”

“Couple of days?” Richard looked at Matt and Bill. Seeing no argument, he continued, “Well, okay then. We’ll plan on another run on Friday.”

Matt and Bill left together, leaving Richard and Kevin to the tedious process of post-experiment analysis.

As they walked down the hall, Bill turned to Matt. “Let’s keep this quiet?”

Matt rolled his eyes. “Rogue physicist. Good grief.”

June 19              Erin

Erin and the three other students in her group, Ted, Sheila, and Cassandra, were assigned to work with Doug Reed on the third day. Doug was a geologist with Yellowstone, and he discussed his job with Erin and her classmates as they walked.

“You get out of university, and you expect to spend all your time hiking around, looking at the scenery, checking and measuring and digging. Then reality hits. You spend so much of your time on paperwork and meetings. The level of bureaucracy is just staggering.”

Doug shook his head. “Then there are the PR duties. You guys would not believe how much time I spend, in person or on the phone or via email, reassuring people about the probability of eruptions or explaining why we can’t do anything about the volcano. Like I’m supposed to hose it down or something.” He grinned at them.

“And of course, we give tours to the public. Those can be good or bad, depending on the group. Sometimes I find myself wondering why I pushed myself through university just to listen to some kid whining about how his feet hurt from walking around in his flip-flops.” He swiped two fingers across his forehead, right to left. “
Tourista!”

Doug put on a sorrowful expression, and the students chuckled. They had learned that people wandering around Yellowstone with wildly inappropriate and inadequate clothing and gear was a standard gag with the park staff.

Doug stopped and turned to the others. “One time, we walked to the top of Mammoth Hot Springs, and there was a lady up there in a dress and five inch stilettos! How…?”

After a pause, he continued in a happier tone. “Anyway, these tours with students like you are the best. I get to do the stuff I came here to do in the first place, and I get to talk about it with people who won’t go catatonic on me.”

They had started at Frog Rock and hiked to Blacktail Ponds Lake, checking setups on the way. At each stop Doug unlocked the boxes, performed some basic diagnostics, and discussed the purpose of the setup and some of the readings. It was routine work, but the whole process fascinated Erin. She promised herself that when she graduated she would be aiming for Yellowstone.

As they walked up a small rise near the lake, the ground shook for several seconds.

“Whoa! Did you feel that?” Erin asked.

“Yeah. About a three, three point five,” Doug replied. “No biggie. We get dozens of quakes per day, although you don’t notice most of them. The trees barely
moved on that one.”

Ted did not look reassured. “Er, we’re not in any danger are we?”

Doug stopped and turned to him. “Listen, Ted, you’re walking around in the caldera of a former supervolcano, which is very much
not
extinct. Of course it’s dangerous. But to put it into perspective, statistically
you’re more likely
to die walking around downtown Lincoln.”

Ted looked even less reassured. “Okay, but what are the chances—”

He was cut off by a loud grinding sound and another quake, this one strong enough to make several people lose their balance. The pines swayed back and forth as if gripped in a tornado. In the distance, there was a crack and a crashing sound, just as the shaking stopped. The smell of damp dust hung in the air, and a shower of needles fell from the trees.

“Ow, my butt,” Sheila said, massaging the injured area. “That’s not part of the tour. This is unacceptable. Who do I complain to?” She smiled at Doug, obviously flirting a bit.

Doug grinned back. “That was more like a five.” He lost the smile. “I think it took down a tree.”

Ted tried again. “So the chances—”

With no buildup, the ground shook hard enough to toss the students off their feet. The quake was accompanied by a grinding, thudding sound like a fully loaded dump truck making an emergency stop on gravel.

“Holy—” Doug yelled, as trees began to topple. “—Shit—”. Someone screamed, and Erin thought it might have been her. “—That’s—”. Tree after tree lost the battle with gravity. Loose rocks skittered down the slope, and a cloud of dust rose several feet off the ground.

After a few more seconds, this latest earthquake stopped. “—getting upwards to a seven,” Doug finished, his eyes wide and staring.

The group picked themselves up off the ground, hands spread out defensively, ready to abort if there were another quake. There was a loud sloshing sound, which Erin realized was the lake pouring back into its basin. As she looked around, she could see that a significant number of trees had gone down. In many cases, the shaking had produced a domino effect, with each tree leaning on the next.

Doug finished examining the changed scenery, looked at his charges, and said, “I, uh, think we’d maybe better cut this short.”

No one argued, so they did an about-face and hiked back to where they had parked. On the way, Doug’s phone rang. He flipped it open and put it to his ear. “Hey. Uh huh. You’re kidding. Wow, that bad? Yeah, I understand. No, no, we’re on our way. Kay bye.”

He turned to the group. “Bad news, kiddies. Vacation has been canceled. This quake was a seven plus. It’s opened some fissures, and we’re getting honest to God lava flows. Not big, but still… Anyway, several of your classmates were injured, and your prof is pulling the plug.”

“Aw crap!” Erin exclaimed. “Just when it was getting interesting!”

Ted looked at her as if she’d just grown an extra head.

***

It took a few hours for everyone to get back to the field office.

Professor Collins finished his third head-count and said, “Okay, everyone’s here that isn’t in the infirmary. I’ll fill them in later. Folks, I’m not a lawyer, thank God, but even I know that a release form isn’t worth diddley if I knowingly
take you all out into a more dangerous situation than you signed up for. I’ve been discussing things with the USGS folks here—“ He indicated one of the onlookers with a tilt of his head, “And this is
not
business as usual. Uplift in the caldera just increased by thirty centimeters. For those who have forgotten, it’s risen by less than two centimeters in the previous six months. In fact, Dr. Lowenstern has informed me that, based on today, he’s going to ratchet up the Current Volcano Alert Level from
Normal
straight up to
Warning
. And I remind you that the next level up from
Warning
is
Oh Shit!
”

That got laughs, even from the USGS rep, who had been looking very solemn through most of the professor’s speech.

“Anyway, I’ve checked with the charter company, and they can take us home early. You’ll get full credit regardless, but I’m going to change the thesis requirements a little to allow you to put in some personal observations of your experiences today.”

Erin found Sheila and Cassandra in the crowd of students. “Hey, Sheila. Did you get your butt-cast?” Erin teased.

“Hah hah. You are too funny,” Sheila replied with an answering smile. She continued in a more serious tone, “I feel a little sorry for the people who got injured. Hell of a way to start the summer.”

“No kidding,” Cassandra chimed in. “Two broken wrists, a broken arm, and two sprained ankles. Not a good day.”

They paused for a few seconds of sympathetic silence. Then Erin said, “Did you hear what the ranger said, though? Actual lava flows. Someone said there might have been a hydrothermal explosion!” Erin couldn’t hide her enthusiasm.

“Okay, Geology Girl. Time to change back into mild-mannered Erin Savard. Sadly, we are out of here.”

Erin sighed. Sadly, Sheila was right.

Erin waved to Professor Collins as he walked by. “Professor, any chance we can see the lava flows?”

Professor Collins looked at her with a surprised expression. “Not on foot, no. Sorry, Erin, but this is where the university starts to get weird about liability issues. I doubt the park rangers would be any more understanding, either. I’ll tell you what though. I’ll talk to the pilot before we take off and see if he can come anywhere near the area. An aerial view might even be more interesting. Certainly
safer.” The professor raised his eyebrows, inviting a response.

Erin clapped her hands with enthusiasm. “That’d be great!”

Sheila shook her head. “Brain damage.”