Chapter 2.3 - The Discovery (Part 3) V2.1

Fleet headquarters was moving the project along at record pace. Even before the latest test run, they were already looking into future ship design. As it turned out, the current generation of ships thrust for a few days or weeks and then cruised in microgravity until turnaround and then decelerated to their destination. That meant was most of the voyage was at zero-g and the ships were designed to use the interior spaces in all three dimensions. With the Scott-Mittal Field as it was being called; ships were again going to have an actual up and down orientation. As the ship designers started working on the new designs everything started looking like boats and submarines. Some things never change.

Later in 2168, after finalizing the grav plate design, Doctor Scott congratulated his team. "Mynah, Mick, you two are amazing. In less than three hundred days, you've turned a kludged together lab demo unit into a fully documented manufacturing prototype. Tonight, dinner is on me at the best steakhouse in town."

A couple of hours later, Doctor Scott told the AI in the auto-cab to make one stop before going to the restaurant. Waiting on the curb outside of her building was engineer Mynah Mittal. The classic black dress and iridescent wrap she was wearing left Robert speechless. As she demurely entered the cab, he managed to stammer. "Wow, you look great tonight."

"Thanks, Bobby, well you should know by now that I do wear things other than lab coveralls..."

"Indeed. You were very, um, professional looking in Zurich if I remember..."

"What, you didn't seem to disapprove of my wardrobe then, Doctor..."

The brilliant physicist was again completely outside of his comfort level. "No, yes, I don't know! What I mean to say, is that you looked beautiful then and are more beautiful now. Is that okay?"

Mynah smiled and pecked Robert on the cheek. "Bobby, you can't tell a girl that she is talented, beautiful and smart enough times in a day!"

Robert held Mynah's hand tightly. He whispered to her. "Thanks. I'm not good at this, but, um, I like, you know, being with you..."

Mynah answered Robert's consternation with the lightest of a kiss on the cheek.

At the restaurant, they were met by Mick Jones and Colin Mackenzie. After ordering cocktails for the group, Commander McKenzie offered a toast to the team. "Congratulations Doctor Scott, Ms. Mittal, and you Mick. This will truly be the next great revolution in technology!"

They all clinked glasses.

Scott returned the toast. "Thanks to you for sending us Mick. He's a miracle worker! Without him, I don't know how long it would have taken us to get this technology to Fleet specs. Here's to Mick!"

After a nice meal, good conversation and the coming together of new friends, the group went their separate ways. Robert was not surprised to see Mick head to the bar for a nightcap. He and Mynah shared an auto-cab for the ride home. They rode in silence. Robert found that somehow without intending to, he was holding Mynah's hand. As the cab stopped at her building and the door opened she leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. "Thanks for a great night Bobby, maybe we can do this again. Just the two of us?"

Looking slightly stunned, Robert looked directly into her beautiful green eyes. "It's a deal, I would really like that."

The next morning as he was sitting at his desk, Doctor Scott got a call from an old classmate. After he accepted the call, the video screen showed the bearded face of Doctor Rolf Schmidt. Rolf had been working very hard for several months on the calibration of the ELIGO gravity wave detector at the CERN laboratory in the Euro Union.

"Robert, this is Rolf at CERN."

Scott responded pleasantly. "Good to hear from you again. How are Anne and the children?"

"Fine. Fine, thank you. The baby is still keeping us awake most nights. And you, still single?"

Scott smiled and said. "Yeah, more or less but I do have my eyes on a certain someone."

Rolf smiled and asked. "Let me guess. It wouldn't be that brilliant and equally gorgeous engineer you introduced me to last year?"

"Maybe." Doctor Scott went on. "Okay Rolf, I read your emails. Run it by me one more time from the top..."

"Bob, I've been getting anomalous readings on the Big G; that's what the grad students have been calling our newest G-wave detector. I noticed strong gravitational waves detected by the apparatus starting a couple of months ago. At first, I thought that it was an error in the equipment or something happening locally. The Techs tore the thing apart but couldn't find anything wrong."

"Go on..."

Rolf read from his notes and continued. "I went back through the readings and noticed that the anomalies occurred at the same time every day for a week at 1700Z. Any idea what might be causing this; is this what you hinted at during your visit here?"

"Rolf, I definitely might. I can't talk about it on an open channel, but please send me the details of your results and I'll investigate from our end...I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

Scott thought to himself. I know exactly what's causing those readings at the ELIGO at CERN. We start up at 1000 Pacific time every morning; which just happens to be 1700Z

A few days after their previous call, Doctor Scott called his colleague Rolf.

"Good evening, Rolf."

Rolf replied. "And good morning to you Robert."

"Thanks, let's get right to business. Please press the secure key and then we'll talk."

Scott checked the readings on the videophone and saw that a secure connection had been established. He said. "Secure three point three here Rolf."

"Same here. So what is with all of the security? We're on the same side you know."

"I know. Sorry about all of this, but Fleet insisted."

"Ja, I understand. Another reason I chose to work the civilian side."

Scott put his notes down and looked into the vid screen. "Okay my friend, I'll get right to the point. What you are detecting with ELIGO are the results of my experiments here in Pasadena."

Rolf gave his friend an incredulous look. "Bobby that's impossible. The magnitude of my readings indicates a local grav disturbance of nine or ten g."

Scott smiled and shook his head. "Try twelve point five."

Rolf raised his brows. "You mean my friend, you did it. Your field works?"

"Yes, and better than we had expected."

"Amazing! I didn't think you would ever actually get it to work in practice. I knew the theory was right it was the mechanical part that was going to be impossible, or so I thought."

"I had some help with that part. As a matter-of-fact, that's the part they Classified." Doctor Scott pressed the send document key and continued. "Rolf, I have a proposal. Let's do a joint test. The proposal is in the documents I just sent you."

"Okay, I'll review the details later, what is the executive summary?"

"What I want to do is use my system to see if you can detect non-random patterns."

Rolf though a second. "As in gravity wave communications?"

"You got it, they should propagate at the speed of light and short of an event horizon should pass through pretty much anything in the universe."

"Okay, I'll get back with you. Auf wiedersehen and good night."

The next morning, Scott and Mynah were sitting in his office discussing the parameters of the gravity wave test experiment they were going to run the next day. Mick was still finalizing the build specs for the grav plate, Mark One.

"Okay Mynah, this is what I want to do. First, make sure that our computers and Rolf's are using the same date time group from the atomic clock in Colorado."

"Okay, no problem. We should be using that standard already but I'll double check."

"Next thing I need you to do is program the test plate to pulse in a specific pattern and G field."

Doctor Scott stepped to the whiteboard and drew a series of square waves of various pulse lengths and amplitudes. Mynah looked at the diagram and nodded. "Okay, I get it. We send a series of prime numbers first at one g, then two and so on..."

"That's correct. The next phase of the sequence will be of random numbers."

"Okay, no problem. I can have this programmed this afternoon. We should be ready to run first thing in the morning."

"Great. I'll message Rolf  and tell him we're go for tomorrow."

They both stood up and Robert put his hand on the small of her back and escorted her out of the office. As she left, Mynah gave him a broad smile.

The next morning, the G wave test went off without a hitch. An ecstatic Rolf Schmidt was so excited when he relayed his results via secure video call to Scott that he started the conversation in German. "Es funktionierte! Unmöglich. erstaunlich!!"

"English please Rolf, my German is limited to zwei Bier, bitte and Sie sind eine sehr schöne Frau."

"Ja, Ja sorry."

The two friends discussed the successful results of the experiment and made plans for follow-up tests. The next series would use ASCII characters to send alphanumeric messages.

Later as Scott was quietly reviewing the data, he noticed a discrepancy in the time that the signals were received at CERN. At the speed of light, it should take approximately 0.027 seconds to travel the 8,000 straight-line kilometers from Pasadena to Zürich. The actual time was reported as 2.5*10^-4 seconds. He did a quick calculation on the back of an envelope and determined that equaled a velocity of approximately 100c. Something very strange and unforeseen was going on...