A strange idea came to me, probably due to not enough sleep and too much reading... So this happened 🤷♂️
"Well, that was unexpected…"
"Yeah. Where the hell did it go?"
"No idea. Rewind to the start of the sequence and run it again at one percent speed. I want to see what happened."
"All right, hold on a moment… Let's see…"
"Nothing out of the ordinary yet… Sequence initiation looks good… Field building… That's normal."
"Look at that pinch field current reading though.
That's not normal. It's drawing six times too much power and still rising."
"Wow. Where's it
going? The pion radiation flux is completely normal. No excess heat, magnetic field density is… Huh. It's too high by over ten percent. But that's still nowhere near enough to…"
"…"
"
What the HELL was that?"
"I… don't know. Replay from the point the current spiked, slow it down to single frames."
"Here we… Holy…!"
"How many frames was that?"
"Um… thirty-seven. So the whole event lasted four milliseconds, near enough."
"Back one frame please? There! See that? That's sunlight, and plant life… I don't recognize it any of it."
"That's a hole in space."
"That is indeed a hole in space. I have no idea
how it's a hole in space but there's no denying that's what it is. And our field generator fell through it. Or about… maybe twenty percent of it did? So if it dropped that far in four milliseconds, it accelerated at… hang on, I need to work this out… Right, that's…"
"Just under one point one G."
"Yeah. That's what I got too."
"..."
"That was not only a hole in space, it was a hole in space to
a different planet."
"I have to admit that does seem likely. Impossible, but likely."
"You know what this means?"
"What?"
"It means we need to speak to the Director. And it means our budget worries are over."
Saving the recording to a portable media device, they both got up and hurried out of the room. There was Science to be done, but it was Science in a direction entirely different from the one they'd expected.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Portal field at eighty percent. Aperture projected to reach maximum size in twenty seconds from… mark. Field at eighty-seven percent. Probe ready. Aperture opening initiated. Field at ninety-two percent. Aperture fully punched through. Size increasing at expected rate. Field at ninety-six percent. Size increase accelerating… size stable at maximum. Field at one hundred percent. Run time countdown begun. Five hundred and eleven seconds remaining. Probe sterilizing… Sterilization complete. Probe launched. Aperture successfully traversed. Probe altitude one hundred meters above ground level, orbiting aperture site in increasing spiral radius pattern. Ground mapping running, getting good data."
"Any sign of biologicals?"
"Lots. Vast amounts of plant life, smaller motile life forms everywhere, insects definitely, unknown on other… There. And there. Larger life, warm blooded from the thermals, moving directly away from the aperture. Spooked by the noise, I'd guess. No indications of refined metals, no polymers detected in the air samples or reflective spectrometric scans of the ground, gas analysis shows no hydrocarbons past naturally occurring levels, no fluorocarbons or complex synthetic gases…"
"No sign of intelligent life, then."
"Not anything with a high tech level, certainly. Or anything we'd recognize as that. No obvious indications of fossil fuel use either, so either it's not there or we're far enough away and it's small enough we can't detect it."
"Two hundred and seven seconds left on aperture run time remaining."
"Increase probe altitude to one thousand meters and do a full scan."
"In progress… Probe at altitude, orbiting site. Nothing detected, it's just virgin territory to the horizon, lots of wildlife, but there's no sign of anything intelligent."
"Forty seconds remaining."
"Get the probe back, and shut it down. We've got enough data from this series of runs to keep the analysts happy for weeks."
"Probe returning… Aperture traversed, probe docked, sterilizing… Sterilization complete."
"Aperture run time limit hit, field decaying. Field at eighty percent… seventy… Aperture closed. Fifty percent… Ten percent… Field decay complete. System shut down complete."
"Well. That worked rather nicely."
"Looks like it. I wonder when they'll decide on the next phase?"
"It's going to take years before we send anyone through. Don't get your hopes up. We still need to work out how to get the aperture large enough to be useful, and
that means cracking the energy barrier issue, which is… complicated. Doable, the theory guys are sure of that, but complicated."
"Oh well. Hopefully they can figure it out while I'm still young enough to have a chance to get on the mission."
"Maybe. We'll see. Now, though… Lunch, guys?"
"Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm starving."
They left the lab, turning out the lights on the way, as the data from the probe was uploading to the main server, little lights twinkling all around the room. It had been a good day for Science.
Many more would follow.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"The mission has been approved."
"Wonderful! I've been waiting for this for seven years."
"We all have. Now we finally get to see if all our planning works."
"It will. It's been simulated so much we can pretty much guarantee that."
"The thing I'm worried about is the portal terminal requirements."
"Unfortunately there's no way to get the portal aperture stable and large enough to be useful without a terminal on the far side as an anchor. We proved that two years ago. Irritating, but not a major problem. We've got the equipment size small enough now we can get it all through a single-ended portal in pieces and have the autonomous assembler system put it together on the other side. We've tested that too. A lot."
"But if something happens to the terminal equipment… The mission would be stranded."
"Not indefinitely, we have backups and it wouldn't take long to get a new one sent through. And the mission is planned with enough supplies to keep everyone fed and healthy for at least three times the maximum duration required. They'll be fine."
"And if they DO find intelligent life at the destination?"
"Unlikely, we've never seen any signs of it on any of the scouting missions."
"Not impossible, though. We might not even recognize it, you know. We might have seen it dozens of times by now but if it was alien
enough we'd never notice."
"All right, I can't disagree, but that's also been planned for. We've got a first contact package worked up, we got every expert we could find to think about it… Even the people who did the messages on the space probes were brought in. No one expects to find aliens, but if we
do…"
"We might eventually be able to talk to them. Which would be… Incredible."
"Can't deny that. I doubt it will happen, but to be honest I wouldn't mind being wrong on this time."
"You're wrong on
many times."
"Oh, thanks very much. Remind me whose spare bedroom you slept in for a month while your place was being fumigated?"
"It's a joke. You know what those are?"
"I do, yes. I'm not sure
you do based on the evidence. Come on, we've got a meeting to go to and a lot of plans to discuss."
"Hopefully not for another seven years."
"You've met the administration, right?"
"Damn it."
It didn't take seven years, but it was still quite a while before anyone was able to jump through the portal and see what happened. However, Science won't be denied…
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"All right, people, settle down please. Thank you. Well, I have to say I'm as pleased as you all clearly are to have
finally, after so long, reached the eve of what's probably the most significant experiment in history. You all represent the end result of nearly ten years of incredible discoveries and hard work. And you carry with you the hopes of all of the rest of us as you become the first to step onto another world, another
living world, not a mere dead satellite right in our back yard. That program was astounding, but
this one leaves it far behind. Tomorrow, history is made, and the whole course of our civilization, the futures of everyone on the entire planet, will go in a direction one ever dreamed of only a few short years ago. If it hadn't been for a truly serendipitous discovery,
and the skill and attention to detail of a small research team in capitalizing on what they so unexpectedly noticed… Well, we certainly wouldn't be all standing here, would we?"
"So, with that said, if you'll turn your attention to my colleague, we can begin the final mission briefing. Yes, I know how many times we've been over this, and I agree it's somewhat tedious, but it's protocol I'm afraid. And you never know, we might all think of something we missed. I very much hope not though! It would be quite embarrassing considering just how many people and how much money has been plowed into the project over the years…"
"You have the floor, Commander."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Contact with far side terminal established. Terminal data stream initializing… ready. Status report shows all functionality nominal. Power supplies at one hundred percent, buffers engaged, aperture stabilizers active. Receiver field powering up… running. Near side aperture field ramping to full power. Aperture increasing from standby to active size at expected rate. Mission group stand by for transit in sixty-four seconds from… mark."
"Vehicle external sterilization initiated. Sterilization in progress."
"Self checks passed. All systems ready for transit."
"Transit in thirty seconds."
"Sterilization complete."
"Final checks complete. All systems nominal."
"Transit in ten seconds… five seconds… three, two, one… transit engaged."
"Vehicle entering aperture. Transit successful. No anomalies reported from vehicle systems. Mission crew telemetry normal. All crew biosigns nominal."
"Terminal power supply reporting minor fluctuation. Running diagnostics."
"Is it a serious problem?"
"Not yet, but we're not sure where it's… Wait. What the…?"
"Report!"
"Terminal output drivers are registering a massive field density increase! No indications of cause yet. Power supply fluctuation increasing, exceeding safe parameters. Auto shutdown imminent!"
"Damn it, what's the problem?"
"I have no idea! It's like the spatial constant is altering."
"That's impossible."
"I
know. But that's what it looks like."
"Calm down people. Don't panic, work the problem, or we'll have even bigger issues."
"Aperture stability is dropping. We're going to lose the connection."
"Can we boost it from here?"
"Not without burning out half the equipment! It's right on the edge already."
"Compensate for the fluctuation."
"What do you think I've been doing?"
"We're losing it!"
"Mission commander reports terminal is emitting smoke!"
"Damn it! Shut it down! Now!"
Science had a bad day. And quite a loud bang.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"..."
"Well, shit."
"Couldn't have put it better myself, sir."
"Less of the sarcasm, more of the finding out what happened. How soon can we get it working again?"
"The entire field generator section burned out. We can rebuild it but we're going to have to strip down the whole main pinch unit and rewind the coils, they're completely slagged from what I can see."
"How long?"
"At least a week. But that's not the main problem."
"I know I'm going to regret asking… What's the main problem?"
"The primary aperture near side connection unit is reporting a complete signal loss to the remote terminal. That means one, or both, of two things has happened."
"Which are?"
"Either the terminal is dead from something critical failing, or… Or that spatial constant shift we recorded is real."
"Oh, hell."
"Yes. If the terminal failed, we can send through a new one as soon as we get the pinch generator running again, and fix the rest of the issues with the field shaper. But if the constant
has changed…"
"We might not be able to
find them."
"No. If the terminal is working, we can probably, eventually, locate the beacon and compensate for the constant change. If it's
not… That could be a little tricky."
"The Director is going to explode. And the press will have a field day. This isn't good."
"Not really, no, but we couldn't have expected the underlying spatial constant to just change on us. Equipment failure happens, we factored that in. They've got supplies for months, so no one is going to starve to death. But who would expect a universal constant to randomly change? It's like… like… the speed of light suddenly decided to be something else. It's ridiculous."
"What could cause it?"
"I have no idea.
Maybe… No. That doesn't make sense. Perhaps… I'll have to get back to you on that. I need to talk to the engineering team and the theory group. It's going to take a while."
"Damn. You get onto that, keep me in the loop. I need to go and have a very uncomfortable conversation."
"I'll let you know what we find out. Later."
More Science clearly needed to be done, and quite rapidly, but that is sometimes just what happens.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Why is there smoke coming out of the very critical equipment?"
"Um… I'm not entirely certain, Commander."
"Perhaps you could investigate and
become certain? As a favor to me?"
"On it. Let me get my tools… Oh, thanks. You and you, come with me."
Science also needs engineers.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Do you want the good news or the bad news?"
"Which is worse?"
"They're about equally bad, I think."
"So why differentiate them?"
"Tradition."
"Fair enough. Get on with it."
"We're not going anywhere."
"That much I worked out without an engineering degree. Give us more details."
"The terminal power supply is fried. It ate itself trying to stabilize the portal aperture when something weird started altering key operational parameters. We don't have the parts to fix it, so the entire thing is dead until they open a scouting portal from the other side and send through a whole new system. And that may take a while, because from what I can tell, I've got a really nasty suspicion that they lost the lock on our spatiotemporal location."
"What do you mean?"
"The logs show that something slightly shifted the spatial constant. Which should be impossible, but leaving that aside, it looks like it changed just enough to disrupt the portal link. So they don't have a lock on us any more, and since the terminal is currently completely powered down, we don't even have any way to set up a beacon for them to locate, which means…"
"They don't know where we are."
"Exactly. I'm sure they
can find us again
eventually, but that might take months. If we're lucky."
"Can we jury rig something? We've got spares for practically everything, and a lot of equipment we could cannibalize."
"We're missing several critical parts that are specific to the terminal, unfortunately. I might be able to fabricate something but I'm going to have to think about it. It won't be easy, or quick."
"Bugger."
"A good way to describe it, yes."
"We've got food, water, and energy enough to keep us going for a fair while though. We didn't expect this exact scenario, but the possibility of
something going wrong was always there."
"True. Annoying, but not catastrophic yet. I suppose all we can do is put up the buildings and carry on with our mission, until either base gets through to us, or we can engineer a solution from this end. All right, let's get to work. You all know what to do, let's carry on and not let a little problem like being stranded on the other side of reality from home depress us."
"You have a real way with words, sir."
"I try."
Science resumed, as it tends to.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Hmm…"
"What are you hmming about?"
"Hmm? Oh, sorry, I was just wondering what this pion spike in the logs was."
"Spike?"
"Yeah, look. Right here."
"Huh. That's… weird."
"I know, right? It almost looks like…"
"That's pretty damned unlikely."
"But it might explain what happened to the terminal."
"The odds against it are insane."
"Yeah. But you're looking at it same as me."
"Can we get a direction from this?"
"Um…
maybe. I'd need to… Yes, that might work. Go find the portable pion generator, while I pull a few units of the terminal out. I'll need the number six toolkit, and four sections of waveguide, and…"
We're back to Engineering, with Science watching closely.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Got it. Turn that in a circle, will you?"
"Like this?"
"Slower… perfect. Keep going like… Aha! Stop! Hold on… All right, let's carry this over there and do it again."
"Come on, people, this stuff is heavy and it won't move itself!"
"You love telling people what to do, don't you?"
"My chance to shine, this. For a moment I'm the commander."
"The Commander might take exception."
"He's asleep, and I'm not going to tell him."
"Hopefully we can give him some good news when he wakes up. OK, here is fine. You two, put that down carefully.
Carefully! Dropping it is not careful!"
"Botanists, what can you expect. No respect for delicate engineering."
"Hey!"
"Ignore him, he hasn't had breakfast. Right, turn in a circle again. Little slower… stop. Go back? Stop there. Excellent. Let's note that, and get the next reading."
"How long will this take?"
"As long as it takes. You can have breakfast when we're done."
"It'll be lunch by then."
"Or even dinner. It won't kill you. You could stand to lose some weight anyway."
"Oh, shut up."
"Hee hee hee. Over there, hop to it!"
"Slave driver."
"
Engineer."
"Same thing."
Science and Engineering worked hand in hand, because there was a problem to solve.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"How did it go?"
"We've got something interesting. And a bearing to it."
"Oh? Define interesting."
"Interesting being defined in this case as residual traces of what might just be another portal aperture."
"…"
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely sure? No. Sure enough to want to go and have a look, definitely."
"All right, walk me through it."
"OK. The portal field produces a pion flux while it's operating. Quite low level, not hazardous, but easily detectable with the right equipment. Now, pions decay
really fast, which limits how far they can get from the source before they basically disappear, but at the speed of light that's still a fair distance. And the portal, even after it's closed, leaves a slight distortion to the fabric of reality which keeps emitting pions at a much lower level for, with the size of the one we used, perhaps three days or so. We're nearly at the limit, but there's a distinct pion emission coming from this direction. Range is roughly ten kilometers, possibly a little less. I can't locate it more closely than that, and to be honest I'm slightly guessing in some ways. The bearing is fairly accurate though. I think we need to go and have a look at it, whatever it is."
"What could it be?"
"It's either some weird natural occurrence we've never even theoretically expected, or…"
"Another portal."
"He's not wrong. I'm not convinced he's
right, because I can't see how he
could be right, but it's less unlikely that someone opened another portal a few kilometers away from us at exactly the same time we created ours than there's a small black hole sitting on the surface there. Which is the only thing I could think of
other than a portal that could give these readings. And while it's never even been studied as far as I know, I
suspect that two portals opening that close to each other
might cause the spatial constant shift we've seen. I'm not sure about exactly how, but I've run it past the physics team and they agree it's at least vaguely plausible. And probably temporary but the timescale it's temporary
on might be long enough that we wouldn't like it very much."
"But if you two are right, who opened it? As far as I'm aware our group is the only one that was doing any research into it. At least as far as a mission went, instead of theoretical work.
Everyone is doing
that, but I was under the impression that we had the actual hardware."
"So was I. But you know politics… It's not impossible some other group has been doing something similar somewhere else and we didn't know about it. I can think of a few countries that might be both capable of pulling it off and secretive enough not to allow anyone to find out."
"Damn. If that's what happened it's going to cause problems back home."
"Agreed, but not something we need to bother with right now. We've got bigger issues. What do you want to do?"
"We could put a drone up."
"It's barely out of range and they're all recharging now anyway after the mineral survey yesterday. It'll be four hours minimum before we can use them, and aside from that they don't have the right sensors to tell us much, so other than video they'd be fairly useless. Not to mention we'd need to drive closer anyway. In my opinion we might as well just take the rover over and have a look in person. It'll be faster."
"And more interesting."
"Fine. I suppose there's no harm in that. We haven't done any away missions other than on foot yet, the camp is set up, people are getting on with the mission… All right. Grab your team and anything you need and load up. We'll go and see what you found."
"We've already loaded everything, Commander."
"Of course you have. You do know there's such as thing as being
too efficient?"
"Fairly sure you're wrong there, sir."
Science wants to be free, you see.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"We're very close. I'm getting a tiny increase in pions. It's coming from that direction, around this bluff."
"I'm glad this thing is on tracks. I'm not sure wheels would handle the ground."
"Definitely closer. We should be able to see something from up there. Turn left at that boulder, go up the hill."
"Hold on."
Engineering rumbled up the hill while Science looked out the window with an expectant expression.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Little further… careful, it's crumbly here. Back it up, turn twenty degrees right, and try again. Yes, that looks good. We should be able to see…"
"…"
"…"
"You can see it too, right?"
"I'm looking at it but I'm not sure I believe it."
"It's looking at
us and I don't think
it believes it either."
"That's not a competing group."
"Well…
Technically it is. It's just not one of
our competing groups."
"Neither is that one up on the hill there."
"Do you sometimes think things are a little weirder than they should be?"
"Oh, sure, all the time. We research portals to other realities, after all. Weird is sort of the job description."
"A point, yes. What do we do?"
"Go and say hello?"
"That'll be a good trick. I doubt they speak any language we understand."
"Good thing they prepared that first contact data set isn't it? I bet no one expected quite this scenario though."
"Nope. Can't say I did either. Oh, look, that other group is coming down the hill. I guess this is happening."
"So it would appear. Commander? Do you want to be the first one to make contact with two different intelligent alien species at the same time?"
"I can't say that's something I ever considered likely, I have to admit, but it'll certainly be something for the resume. Onwards, and try not to start an inter-reality war."
"Here we go. Let's see what happens next."
"You're nervous. Your tail is twitching."
"So is yours. Of
course I'm nervous! This is crazy. Look at them! Intelligent tool using primates? It's
bizarre!"
"I expect they probably think the same thing. Try not to embarrass our species, will you?"
Science was rubbing its hands together and grinning like an idiot.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"They're dinosaurs."
"I know."
"They're intelligent tool using dinosaurs. In a tank."
"It's not a tank, it's more like an armored personnel car…"
"
That's not the important part!"
"I guess. What do we do?"
"Go and get the commander, and ask him if he'd bring the first contact equipment and some reinforcements?"
"All right."
"…"
"Um…"
"What?"
"Turn around."
"Oh, what are you on about n…"
"Fuck me."
"Those aren't intelligent tool using dinosaurs in a tank."
"No."
"They're giant intelligent tool using bugs in a six wheeled moon rover."
"Yeah."
"I'm not sure I can handle much more of this."
"No one ever said exploring a different reality would be boring."
"No, I suppose they didn't. I wonder if either of these guys know what happened to the portal constant?"
"When we can figure out how to ask them you can ask them. Go get the commander."
"Try not to start a war while I'm gone."
"Trust me, I'm going to stand here being as peaceful as I can possibly be. Hurry."
Science was ecstatic. This was an
amazing day for it. And the succeeding ones were even better. Comparing different extinction events across three variations of one planet and how they left completely different apex species behind kept it going for a very long time indeed.
And Engineering was very pleased, because it turned out that three different but very similar portal generator terminal systems were, after quite a lot of studying, remarkably compatible and quite lent themselves to being combined into one much better device that
didn't cause issues with those pesky universal constants.
Politics, on the other hand, fairly soon got a massive headache, and was a touch annoyed that Science and Engineering completely ignored it and just happily got on with exchanging notes.
But such is life sometimes. You just have to roll with it.
