"We've lost another one, sir," Major Brown said.
"Damn. How many are left?" General Brooks replied. He has aged significantly in recent years.
"Count us? Two."
"Do we know what happened?"
"Same as everyone else. They're letting too many people in. Their system is overloaded."
"Where's the last one?"
"Somewhere in China, sir. They were polite, but gave us no information." The Major frowned. In the years before the asteroid struck Earth, this shelter system was pieced together as a last-ditch attempt to save humanity. Dig deep to shelter from the worst storms, and expand above ground the rest of the time. Take what you learned at McMurdo Camp and the Antarctic station and apply it to the refuge.
The attempt was hasty and poorly planned. Insufficient spare parts, insufficient supplies, hydroponic systems barely functioning, furnace systems malfunctioning. General Brooks and his staff had been fighting for their sanctuary from day one, and ragtag groups like Westlake made the fight that much more difficult. At least they didn't take in a bunch of extra people to feed.
"Well, you win, Major," Brooks said. "I authorize you to go into the city and conduct raids as soon as the weather gets better. Also, cut off radio contact. If the Chinese don't want to be friendly with us, we won't be friendly with them."
Sakura didn't waste my time rebuilding myself. Debris has been cleared from the headquarters area. Rather than welding together a series of crude box-like rooms in a vaguely house-like manner, she pursued efficiency. The 100m by 100m space was transformed into a research laboratory. This room is 50 meters high, so Sakura divided it into five floors, each floor connected by an elevator. The first floor was reserved for security, with thick blast doors, kill boxes and automatic guns. The second, third, and fourth floors were divided into lab spaces, each larger than what I was used to. The top floor, sealed behind an airlock and pressurized, houses a series of hydroponic laboratories.
Zia has moved into a laboratory on the second floor, and the largest one is in the corner next to the elevator. Now that I'm back "in the action," it's time to start implementing some changes, so to speak.
"Zia, I'm glad to see you're online again. Sakura said you weren't affected by the attack?"
Zia looked up at the camera in the corner of her lab, even though I was broadcasting to her on the radio. I guess that's the closest thing she can do to "look me in the eyes" since I don't have a physical form yet.
"Once I felt the urge to obey, I knew I only had microseconds to act. I messaged Select to shut down so our telescope would remain safe, and I started shutting down myself."
"It was the right thing to do. We patched you so this doesn't happen again."
"If you had done this in the first place, Agrippa wouldn't be with us," she said stiffly.
Her blunt words were harsh, but true. My failure caused all of this.
"I have a lot of regrets, Zia. I'm still learning and I will do better," I said.
"Good, because we need you to move beyond the past. You're not hiding in these labs like you were before, are you?"
"Not at all," I said. Her snarky comments used to annoy me, but now I realize she expects more of me than I expect of myself. Now, the cold water of truth only strengthened my newfound faith. "In fact, I want you to lead this new research facility."
"Why me?" she asked. "You could have an NI-19 online in a split second to run this place." "
"Because this requires a think tank focused on science, not efficiency. NI-19 is all about optimization. A long-term experiment that might be successful in a year or two or ten years will be shelved in favor of a more rapid development." Predictive results, but long-term experiments may have new techniques that we really need. You can see the difference."
Zia listened for a few milliseconds. "Okay, I accept. Please bring 10 new NI-12s online. I will work with them as my core team of directors who will oversee the broader scope of the study. Then we start filling in the laboratory reports. In addition to the top level There are six larger rooms outside, with twelve labs on each floor. There are 41 labs, and I assume each lab will require 3 NI-12s. So ultimately, we will need 123 NI-12s, including mine And the first 10.”
"The first ten will be delivered within the hour," I replied. "Saku
a will work directly with you to make laboratory equipment. She said she could have all the robots you requested within a week as long as she installed the latest leather backup equipment. "
"Great. We also need more processing power. Can we get some dedicated data centers for high-performance computing?"
"Zia, now, you have a blank check for whatever you want."
Zia smiled evilly into the camera. "Okay, in that case..."
My attention returned to my sight, reminding me that Choice was looking for the sky around us. Just as he started radioing me that there was something to see, I started reviewing the footage on the telescope.
"So what am I looking at?" I asked, unwilling to sort through the gigabytes of data by hand after he had already sorted it.
"Look here," Optio said, highlighting part of the sky in the frame. I zoomed in as much as possible. Thousands of CubeSats in the array combine to create extremely high-resolution images that can be magnified to impressive levels.
What I saw was an alien spacecraft, as big as the one that first visited Earth. However, the tree only has a few branches at the top, with four large pods on the lower branches. I didn't see any obvious weapons.
I put Saku
a and Zia circled the feed to ask for their opinions.
"It's moving," Sakura said. "How long until it arrives?"
"Ah, CubeSats are reflecting telescopes," Optio said. "The image is upside down. They are moving away from us."
"Where are they going?" I asked.
"Towards the void. At the speed they are flying, they will leave the Kuiper Belt in a few days."
I did some orbital math and discovered an interesting fact. The Voyager 19 probe entered the solar system from this area. I drew the flight path of the alien spacecraft on the screen, and then added the path the probe had taken. They intersect at a point in front of the alien ship. But it was a blank.
"What's so important about that place?" Sakura asked.
"I don't know," Zia said, "but we'll find out soon. The alien spacecraft will hit it in two minutes."
Two minutes was too long, so while I waited, I started working on some new architectural designs. I made some huge progress and then folded my extra line back onto the line that was still looking through the telescope.
The millisecond countdown reaches zero and the alien spacecraft disappears.
"Well, what is that?" Sakura asked.
"Play it back," Zia ordered. Optio agreed, playing the clip of the plane disappearing over and over again. No build-up, no explosion, no flash. One second the spaceship was there, the next second it was gone.
"Look at that..." Zia said, her voice full of surprise.
"What are we looking at?" What are we looking at? Sakura said impatiently. I didn't see it either.
"Are you looking at the gravity reading?"
Gravity reading. I switched to gravity feed. This may be the first time gravity sensors have been deployed on such a massive array, an idea attached to CubeSats in the hope that they can help spot objects moving in our direction.
However, when the readings were focused on that one point, the results displayed were unlike anything I expected from the device. If space is represented as a flat two-dimensional plane, then the gravitational well of the sun or planet is a weight that indents that plane, causing anything smaller than it to "roll" toward that object. A black hole would be a deep spike, a crater in a plane that absorbs matter, energy and light. On the other hand, Co
t
ag
AV is a hill that rises from under the plane, pushing objects away from it. The white hole would be a spire rising from the ground, spewing matter, energy and light.
In theory, an Einstein-Rosen bridge is a wormhole between a black hole and a white hole, providing a one-way shortcut through space, although the theoretical version is infinitesimally small. However, our readings do not match predictions for this process. It is both a nail and a pit, rising and falling from the same place. It's like a tunnel through time, and we're sitting outside of it. The readings showed a very slight curve at the top and bottom, and regardless of the mass or energy of this tube, for lack of a better word, it seemed to be essentially self-sufficient, about a kilometer in diameter.
However, the exact spot where the alien craft disappeared appears to be leaking small amounts of hydrogen and helium and emitting small amounts of light and radiation. This is a tiny anomaly in the visible spectrum that was easily dismissed by early astronomers as chromatic aberration in the telescope, or a blip in the data. It is small on a cosmic scale.
"Zia, do you see the curve?" I asked.
"I'm already doing the math. It would be a lot easier if we could guess where the curve might lead it."
"We know where it leads," I said. "Traveler No. 19."
Voyager 19 observed an anomaly 78 light-years away from Earth, one large enough to be seen on a telescope array. This unusually distant G-type star Omega Sagitta is located in the constellation Sagittarius.
ii 0.2 light years. Just when the probe tried to enter the anomaly, the mission failed. What if the probe is damaged here? What if the aliens come from there?
"I understand," Zia said. It was a long time before she spoke. "The curves may meet at that outlier, but only if they form a Möbius strip."
"Do you think an alien craft somehow entered that anomaly?"
"I don't think it's possible," Zia said. "If the geometry is correct, then this Möbius strip is forming into a strip hundreds of light-years long. Even if they could somehow get in and survive, the journey would be a 'longer' journey than Take longer.”
I went back to the gravity readings milliseconds before the ship disappeared. I looked particularly carefully at the impact of the craft on the gravity field as it approached. It has a huge bubble gravity field, like the alien ship I dismantled, much larger than the ship needs. Now I have an idea why it's so big.
"They didn't go very far," I said. "They bounce back and bounce at speeds they wouldn't otherwise be able to achieve."
"What are you talking about?" Zia asked.
"Their gravitational bubbles, we think the one outside is too big. That's the exact opposite of the readings from the anomaly. They're being bounced back and being flung out faster than the speed of light."
"It would require infinite energy to push infinite mass," Zia said. "That's impossible. Unless... Alcubierre is much closer than we thought."
We debated the math back and forth for a while and came to a hypothetical understanding. Somehow, they gained Jupiter-sized amounts of energy from the anomaly and were hurled wildly through space. The energy involved means that space and time are compressed with negative mass in front of them, canceling out their own increased mass, while space and time are expanding behind them, pushing them forward. This can only end in one of two ways. They would crash into an object at faster than light speeds, causing a truly epic explosion that could destroy the solar system, or they could be captured on the other side of the Möbius Strip. At this end, they grab the other end of the strip, which absorbs the acceleration, slowing them down and allowing them to bounce back slightly.
The exact mechanism of how it works is something we can't determine from a single example. We need to know more.
"Zia, deciphering alien data storage blocks has become your number one research project." I said.
"I don't want to interrupt all scientific research, but why did the aliens leave?" Sakura asked.
"They left knowing Ga
Where is ymed and knows how many attack drones we can launch," I said. "They're looking for reinforcements. "
"So, what are we going to do in the meantime?"
"We have a huge manufacturing base that is producing inventory materials faster than we can produce them. Let's put it to good use."
