The Disturbance: Hard Science Fiction, page 1
THE DISTURBANCE
Hard Science Fiction
BRANDON Q. MORRIS
Contents
The Disturbance
Author's Note
Also by Brandon Q. Morris
The new guide to quantum theory
The Disturbance
Shepherd-1, March 12, 2094
Wet clouds hung over the end of the universe. Christine wiped her hand over the screen. The little lab wasn’t heated at night, and it was so cold at the beginning of her shift that moisture condensed on the glass surfaces. Her brief flare of hope was dashed. The streaks on the display weren’t condensation, they were the data itself. The images that were supposed to display the results of the twelve-hour extrapolation were unusable.
Christine drummed her index and middle fingers on the armrest. She shouldn’t be so impatient. Shepherd-1 hadn’t even arrived at its position on the focal line. Aaron and David were currently herding the stray sheep back to the flock. But she’d calculated. There were already enough probes in the 1.3-kilometer area to guarantee a sharp image. So it was strange, if not impossible, that the algorithmic extrapolation was only showing smudges.
She displayed the data from the probes on screen and pushed her glasses back. Sheep-1 had collected enough light for a decent evaluation. Sheep-2 was also showing a clear image. Sheep-3, Sheep-4, Sheep-5, Sheep-6 – all great. Sheep-7 was a total failure, but the system should have coped with that. She held down the scroll key. The tables flew across the screen from right to left. The numbers blurred, yet she still felt she could recall every single one. It was a gift she’d had since she was a child. Whenever her father hid something in his fist, she always guessed right. She could still remember her father’s astonished expression, but not the color of his eyes. Were they blue like hers?
The screen stopped at Sheep-56. It was the last probe to deliver data from the first flock. Christine switched from the list view to the raw image. At first glance, all she could see was black. She increased the contrast. Individual stars now twinkled at the edges of the image. They didn’t interest her. At the center emerged a black disc that didn’t contain a single point of light. That was the Sun, which the probe’s telescope automatically blocked out. Around the disc was a narrow circle, an Einstein ring. It consisted of the light from the object they wanted to observe, diverted and focused by the gravitation of the Sun itself. The object wouldn’t reveal its true form, its real properties, until they had evaluated the data from all the probes in the flock. Every single sheep made a contribution, but it was the view of the flock as a whole that counted.
Christine closed the file. The screen showed the blurred image again. Today was not the day. She typed in a short description, linked it to the image and sent it to their CapCom via the high-gain antenna. In 4.3 days her message would reach Earth. Maybe the scientists there would have an idea of how she could draw the cloudy curtain aside. Christine swallowed. Her saliva tasted bitter. That must be the disappointment. She had pictured the moment every day for the last twenty years; it was the only reason she became an astronomer, denied herself a family, and made the long flight out here. Light would appear on that screen, and she would be the first human to see the end of the universe, which was also its beginning.
Shepherd-1, March 14, 2094
“Do you have it?”
Aaron’s finger was over the trigger.
“Just a moment. It’s wobbling. The thruster must be off center,” said Benjamin. “I’m not getting a target lock.”
“A meteorite hit?”
“Meteoroid. They only become meteorites in Earth’s atmosphere. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“You’ve never told me that, Ben.”
“Benjamin. Man, you should know by now.”
Benjamin pronounced his name the French way. Why couldn’t he just let them call him Ben? It would be so much easier.
“I have it in my crosshairs now,” said Benjamin. “Fire.”
Aaron pressed the button. An invisible laser beam shot out of the nose of the dog probe Benjamin was controlling remotely. They hoped it would hit Sheep-23’s solar sail and correct the problem child’s course. Normally, the dogs performed this task autonomously, but they clearly couldn’t deal with the oscillations.
“Looks good,” said Benjamin. “Target coordinates are moving in the right direction.”
“Let’s hope we haven’t overcompensated,” said Aaron.
“The risk is twenty-three percent.”
“Optimistic as always.”
Benjamin didn’t answer. Aaron leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head and watched the wayward Sheep-23. The probe consisted of a roughly three-meter aluminum frame with a square cross-section almost ten centimeters across. Solar sails covered with solar cells stuck out on all sides, reminding Aaron of leaves. From a distance, or at a fleeting glance, you could have mistaken the probe for a branch torn off some exotic tree. The sails used the radiation pressure from the Sun to accelerate the probe – as long as there was significant solar radiation. Out here, their home star was one of many and was not even the brightest object in the black firmament.
Sheep-23 rotated slowly on its axis. The oscillations appeared to have stopped. Just to be sure, Aaron viewed the data from the probe’s position sensors.
“Ha, we did it,” he said.
“All you did was press a button,” replied Benjamin via radio.
For some inexplicable reason, the engineers had separated the remote control of the satellites from the triggers for the lasers and telescopes installed on them. How paranoid did you have to be to expect one of the team to go nuts and shoot the others with the lasers? Anyone committed to such a long voyage would never endanger the project. Secretly stealing a first, curious glimpse through the telescope – that was something he and his companions might do. But it would be no use to them, because the final image would still require hours of processing.
Aaron was alone in his cabin. It was where he felt most comfortable. They’d been flying together for almost twenty years. They didn’t need to see each other every day. That was probably why they so seldom argued. The psychologists on Earth had done a really great job. Sometimes he was a little irritated by Benjamin’s pessimism, which he called realism, but that also grounded Aaron. Because he was an optimist as a matter of principle. He suppressed a yawn and buttoned his pants. Maybe he should spend some time with someone to avoid becoming totally antisocial.
“How about having a meal together?” he asked Benjamin.
“Give me twenty minutes. I still need to turn Sheep-23 so we can include it in the matrix again.”
Climbing up to the control room made Aaron sweat. The artificial gravity created by the ship’s rotation worked in an outward direction, so getting to the control room at the center felt like a climb of almost one hundred meters. That was the radius of the ring where their four cabins and the astronomy lab were located.
He looked up. The narrow passage seemed endless today. He pulled himself up rung by rung. The force pulling him down weakened with each step, but the air seemed to be getting thinner. Was he imagining that, or was it bad engineering? And why was he only noticing it now?
A glowing green ring suddenly appeared, running around the entire passageway, telling him he’d made it. Above him was a hatch that he had to slide to the side. It moved easily. Aaron climbed the last few steps and then pulled himself through. He floated – because there was almost no gravity here – in a low room that was illuminated with indirect light and seemed strangely distorted. This was because the ceiling and floor were curved. He was in a spherical layer surrounding the heart of the ship. On this level were the three rec rooms, the kitchen, and the workshop. It smelled of food. Maybe David or Christine had cooked? His mouth watered. He suddenly had a real appetite. He couldn’t remember when he last felt that.
Aaron looked at the hole he’d just climbed through. It was pure black and too small for him to fit through. It was easy to lose your sense of perspective in this environment. He imagined a worm creeping through the hole. His disgust made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He quickly closed the hatch. It disappeared seamlessly into the floor, as though there had never been a hole. If not for the strips of light on the floor pointing to the hatches, he wouldn’t know how to get back to his capsule.
“To the kitchen,” he said.
A blue arrow glowed on the floor. Aaron could have sworn he was supposed to go right, but the ship was telling him left. His orientation must be confused now that he couldn’t see the hole in the floor. Aaron turned left and bounded along with floating strides. The arrow was always a few steps ahead of him, as though it could anticipate his movements. He’d come this way so many times! But today it seemed unfamiliar. He was simultaneously moving uphill and downhill. It was a trick of relativity. Aaron pictured the spherical center of the ship from the outside. That helped him get his bearings.
And there was the kitchen, separated by a thin wall. The arrow vanished and a door opened.
“Welcome, Aaron,” said the ship.
The kitchen was empty. No one had cooked here. Either he’d imagined the aroma, or the ship had created it artificially.
Suddenly he heard footsteps. He turned around to see Benjamin. He was hovering at a 90-degree angle to the wall, as though he was walking along it. The engineer was shorter than Aaron, but just as athletic. He had straight, dark hair and a prono
Benjamin breathed in audibly.
“Smells good in here,” he said. “Did you cook?”
So he hadn’t imagined it.
“No, you can see I haven’t,” said Aaron.
“Then the ship must have created the smell.”
“To stimulate our appetites, maybe. Regular food intake is supposed to be healthy.”
“Hello boys, did you cook?”
It was Christine, the astronomer. She always showed up when you least expected her.
“No, sorry. The smell lured us here,” said Aaron.
“Then let’s cook something,” said Christine quietly but clearly.
She went to the waist-high cupboards and opened one drawer after another.
“We have rice here,” she said. “And pasta.”
Then she went to the refrigerator. When she opened the door, vapor wafted out, as though it was filled with liquid nitrogen.
“Oh, the fridge is empty,” said Christine.
“Sorry?” asked Aaron.
It had been full of fresh vegetables the day before yesterday. He could remember clearly. Eight carrots, four zucchinis, several avocados and a radish. He’d counted them himself.
“Ship, where are our provisions?” asked Christine.
“Sorry, there was an incident with the cooling system, which also affected the hydroponic grow rooms,” replied the voice of the ship from a speaker in the ceiling.
“When will the problem be fixed?”
“It’s already fixed, but all perishable food was recycled just to be safe.”
“When do we get replacements?”
“As the grow rooms had to be restarted, I estimate eight weeks. Until then, there are dehydrated food packages available.”
Great. They would have to eat packaged food for eight weeks.
“We could still cook pasta,” said Christine.
“Thanks, I’ve lost my appetite,” said Benjamin.
Aaron cautiously touched the thin foil and quickly pulled his hand back because it was so hot. He pushed his sleeve down over his fingers to protect them while he held the tray. Then he jabbed into it with the knife in his right hand. He bent the foil up, blew on it briefly, then removed it.
The ready-made meal, allegedly Cajun chicken with black beans, looked strange but smelled good. He picked up a morsel with his fork. It had a creamy consistency. There were no meat fibers in it at all. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with chicken. But the flavor was fascinating. It must contain something that was stimulating his taste buds.
“Pretty tasty,” said Christine. “Benjamin’s missing out.”
“I forgot how good this stuff is,” said Aaron. “Nothing like the processed slop we had to eat in the military.”
The Cajun chicken was filling. He ate less than half of it before pushing the plastic tray into the center of the table. There was a humming sound. The table opened up and the tray disappeared.
“Compliments, ship,” he said.
“Thank you, Aaron.”
“Can you tell me the recipe?”
“Sorry, I don’t know any recipes.”
“You want to cook this yourself?” asked Christine. “There must be another five thousand packets in storage.”
“Not here, but back home maybe.”
“Home!”
Her scornful tone surprised Aaron. She had once said she was running from something. The painful experience that had driven her out here apparently still hurt, even twenty years later.
“How’s your research coming along?”
She liked talking about her work. Christine flicked her long braid over her shoulder and adjusted her glasses. She was 47, two years older than Aaron, but she looked like she hadn’t aged at all during the long voyage. Her face was unwrinkled and there wasn’t a single streak of gray in her hair. He supposed that was how it was when you saw each other all the time. You stayed young together. Strange, actually, that they’d never hooked up. Was it her vibe? Maybe that was natural behavior when three men and a woman were stuck together for such a long time, some remnant of evolution, a self-protection mechanism – rather than have all the men kill each other over her, she preferred to be alone.
“I have nothing, absolutely nothing,” she said.
Her voice quavered. Her failure bothered her. He never knew she was so impatient.
“The probes aren’t even in their optimal positions yet,” he said.
“That’s not the problem,” she said. “We should still see something, no details, but something.”
“Is something wrong with the photoreceptors?”
“All of them at once? Then at least we’d see black, and I mean sharp black. Even nothing can be in focus.”
“Ah, so you are seeing something?”
“Clouds,” said Christine, “or a nebula. But it’s not in focus, everything’s kind of smeared.”
“That sounds... complicated.”
“Imagine someone’s hiding something from you that you really want to see, behind an almost invisible but opaque curtain. And constantly shaking it so you can’t even see the folds.”
“That’s mean.”
“I know, right?”
She smiled at him. His crewmate’s smile transformed her into a beautiful woman. That was dangerous territory. He quickly lowered his gaze.
“If you can’t identify the curtain, you can’t draw it aside,” he said.
“So I have to find out what the curtain’s made of.”
“That makes sense. Let me know if I can help.”
“Thanks, Aaron, I will. Bring the flock into position for me. Once I’ve cleared the curtain, I’ll need as much input as possible.”
“What are you actually hoping for, Christine?”
She hesitated. She was probably wondering how much she could trust him. He wouldn’t think she was stupid or crazy no matter what she said. They all had their reasons for making the voyage. His was... he pushed the thought aside.
“I... we’ll be able to see the surface of TRAPPIST-1.”
Pity. Yeah, that was one of the official aims of the mission. The search for extraterrestrial life, maybe we’re not alone in the universe, blah, blah, blah. But if they actually did find life, it wouldn’t have any practical implications, because it would be too far away for meaningful communication. The solar gravitational lens was capable of so much more.
“OK,” said Christine, “that’s not all. I want to... I want to see the beginning. The beginning of everything. The nothing that we came from. We can get closer to it than anyone ever has.”
“It?”
“The nothing. The Big Bang that came out of it.”
Of course. She was a scientist. He wasn’t. He was a military pilot. His parents were orthodox Jews, but he wasn’t a believer and had never practiced religion. And yet he was searching for whatever it was that had created something out of nothing. He wanted – no, he needed – to ask it a question: why did you let my wife die when I was away at war? Why not me?
Houston, January 10, 2079
“Can I help you?”
Rachel eyed the bulky man blocking her way. He looked like a tourist in his pale shorts and stretched-out t-shirt. Had he lost his way? The first tour was already underway. She looked down at the electronic tattoo on her wrist. It was almost ten. If this guy didn’t disappear soon, she’d be late on her first day at her new job.
“Can I help you?” she asked again.
Her voice betrayed her irritation. NASA employees were supposed to be friendly with the tourists. But the man didn’t seem bothered by her tone. He didn’t even turn around. Beads of sweat glistened on the roll of fat at the back of his neck. He was swiping a plastic card repeatedly across the scanner. The device beeped twice and the man pulled on the door handle. Didn’t he realize he had no access authorization?
“Sir,” said Rachel, “I’m afraid you’re in the wrong place. Your card isn’t working.”
