A Slight Miscalculation, Episode 2: New SF by Mark Laporta

[Editor’s Note: Read the Story from the Beginning]

All the way out to the Skelana system on the Sky Rock, a ship with IMC markings, Crawford tried to weave together the few tattered threads of data that Arielle’s team had come up with. The trouble was, the readings they’d taken made no sense, even as “weird” data. Was the substance they’d uncovered merely a rare kind of energy-lensing crystal, or was it actually the edge of another universe poking up into his?

For the former to be true, the source of the energy would have been immediately apparent. That was simple geometry, in that the angle of the light’s emission would be traceable to a source at a complementary angle, no matter how many light years distant it might be.

But no. The only thing along that trajectory was a small space station that orbited a totally nondescript planet. It was two systems over from the asteroid belt where the strange phenomenon was found. At best, its output equaled 0.00001% of the energy pouring out of the asteroid in question. Besides, what would the Skelanese have wanted with a human space station that was scheduled for decommission within the month?

That, unfortunately, left Crawford with the uncomfortable realization.

A freaking ‘other universe’ right under out feet, he thought. What did Djaleerin do?

Djaleerin had been the leader of the mysterious Skelanese project and his closest associate among the aliens. They’d argued out the pros and cons of everything from the basic premise of the Skelanese experiment to the nerdiest technical details of its realization. As it happened, Crawford’s interests went beyond exogeology, to the study of the cosmic forces that had shaped the unexpected minerals and metals his field work uncovered.

Not satisfied with What, he also had a keen instinct for Why, and had spent thousands of downtime hours reading up on a host of related fields. That had ignited fiery debates on the most recondite bits of physics. Crawford knew from the outset that he was in over his head. But his curiosity drove him to insist on a full explanation — even when he doubted he could retain it.

But there was more to Crawford’s pursuit of understanding beyond sheer doggedness. Over time, Djaleerin became more than a business associate. Despite the chasm of species incompatibility that separated them, the supple contours of her mind had entered his own. They’d bonded telepathically in a way no one in Crawford’s circle would understand — which was not to suggest that he understood it either. Had it been the glint of her yellow, feline eyes, the graceful slink of her every move?

It just happened, he told himself.

Now he had more immediate concerns than lost love. Left unchecked, the strange phenomenon he’d been asked to investigate promised to wreak havoc with several cubic parsecs of the known universe. That is, if he could believe the data summary he’d received from Arielle’s team. The thought of that put his wistful reminiscence into deep perspective.

And yet, he realized, there was no way to crack this conundrum without thinking back to Djaleerin’s edgy experiments. Together, the Skelanese had taken the principles of the space folding engine as a point of departure. Given the tight security ring that his hosts had maintained around their project, that was almost all he could discover, except for this: the Skelanese were determined to create a passageway to any parallel universe they chose.

Even Djaleerin had refused to explain more than was absolutely necessary for him to carry out his assignment, which had its own devilish complexity. Imagine searching for an asteroid capable of absorbing shock waves generated by a suite of esoteric equipment that had yet to be tested.

Freaking nightmare, he reminded himself. The dimensions were the easy part. But the density … and how exactly to hollow an asteroid out to a uniform thickness, without even a single surface crack. Worse, the Skelanese wanted a space boulder with “resonance,” a quality they were incapable of quantifying. Crawford gave up asking and set his mind to designing AI-controlled dampeners to line the asteroid’s interior walls. If he could embed the dampeners in rock with a low shear modulus, he reasoned, the modified asteroid would be flexible enough to absorb the high levels of stress forecast by Skelanese predictive modeling.

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One quiet evening, after a long day of taking precise mass/density readings on thousands of candidate asteroids, Crawford sat down to dinner with Djaleerin. Though their differing anatomies dictated that they could hardly have shared a meal, there was nothing stopping them from sharing meal time. And that night, for once, the Skelanese female had let her guard down.

“We figured it out by studying data from thousands of space fold engine event logs,” she said. “There was a precise point in one out of every hundred folds or so, where a particular engine would grab first a little more of surrounding space than usual and then a little less. The only explanation, we imagined, must be some type of interference. And if we assume that this interference had come from a neighboring universe….”

She’d rattled on dreamily for the next half hour, her bright yellow eyes glistening in the last rays of artificial sunset aboard the Skelanese base ship. There wasn’t much left in Crawford’s head now of her explanation, but maybe just enough to point him in the right direction. He tapped a command into the armrest of the charcoal gray acceleration chair and called up the ship’s comsystem. A few seconds later, he’d found the connection he needed.

“Arielle,” he said, “get somebody in Research to track down every event log from ships that have passed through the Skelana asteroid belt in the time leading up to your discovery.”

“Won’t you be needing their mess hall menus, too?” asked Agent Chaplin.

“Fine,” said Crawford. “Take me home. Either I get your full cooperation, or you get nothing out of me.”

“Grouchy,” said Arielle. “But you’re in luck. I have a new recruit who’d be perfect for you. I’m told she makes AIs dance.”

“Not a pleasant thought,” said Crawford. “Just get her on it.”

“On what?” asked Arielle. “I don’t have a clue what you’re looking for. You’ll have to explain it to her.”

“But….” said Crawford.

“I know,” said Arielle. “It’s all over your psyche profile. You have a case of social anxiety big enough to ram a spread of antimatter torpedoes through. Too bad. Either brief Dulcey Shear or dig up the data yourself. You can screentalk her, you know.”

The connection went dead. Crawford swallowed hard. Actually meeting a new person was not among his top talents. Still, he knew Djaleerin would want him to ferret out the answer and, besides, he owed her. But how could he overlook the rumbling fog that had just rolled into the pit of his stomach?

Get a grip, he told himself. Hadn’t he handled this kind of thing thousands of times before? Besides, he reasoned….

“Hi … Dr. Caldera?” said a voice behind him.

Crawford spun around in the chair that he’d so far been too nervous to leave. Before him was a woman in her early thirties. Despite the dowdy, functional mission wear assigned to everyone at GalaxyPol, he had no trouble deciding that she was embarrassingly attractive.

Too bad I look like a sack of potatoes, he thought. Wasn’t that nanobot therapy supposed to kick in by now?

By contrast, the woman’s dark skin radiated vitality — as did the flash of inteligence in her eyes and her decidedly non-regulation shoes. Yet if Crawford’s disparaging self-appraisal mattered remotely to her, it didn’t show on her smiling face. In spite of himself, he stood up.

“Dulcey Shear?” he asked.

“Right!” said the woman. “Agent Chaplin said you were a fast study.”

Crawford tried hard not to roll his eyes, and failed.

“She’s so clever, isn’t she?” he said. “Anyway, if you can help me track down….”

“Event logs. Got it,” said Dulcey. “You trying to track space fold engagement? That can be tricky. Ship logs tend to lump all engine activity together, you know, as a statistical mean. But I can dig into the daily logs. You have an energy range you’re looking for?”

Crawford described what he thought he needed: Instances where a ship had used more energy than usual to create a fold and instances where the same ship had used less than the usual amount of energy to exit the fold.

“Or vice versa,” he said. “What’s so funny?”

“Sorry to smile,” said Dulcey. “It’s just that the last person I heard say ‘vice versa’ was my grandfather. What sector are you from?”

“The dinosaur sector, I guess,” said Crawford. “Now there’s one more thing. If you find any log entries that match that scenario, look for any sign of interference — you know, static on the line.”

“Static?” asked Dulcey. “Oh, oh, you’re making an analogy. Though there might be noise of some other kind, randomized cosmic particles, turbulence and so on.”

Smart as Hell, thought Crawford.

After a bit more chatter, Dulcey raced off to her workstation on one of the ship’s upper levels, obviously intrigued. When she was out of sight, Crawford ran a hand through his graying hair and decided it was time for a snack, which he figured he’d eat in his quarters. But on his way to the ship’s mess hall, he heard Arielle’s voice blaring out at him from the shipwide intercom.

“Caldera!” she shouted. “Check out the main view screen.”

Crawford’s head snapped to the right where, on the far wall of his bulkhead, a huge video monitor stared out at him. On screen was a flaming, planet-sized fireball that looked as if it were emerging from a glowing split in the cosmos.

“What … where is that image coming from?” he asked.

“For now, about ten light years away,” said Arielle. “But, of course, we’re heading right for it.”

From the data crawl at the bottom of the screen, Crawford knew exactly why. The coordinates indicated the very asteroid belt he’d studied eight years earlier — where, by all appearances, a planet from another universe had poked its nose into this one.

To be continued…. Read Episode 3 here.

A new Episode of A Slight Miscalculation will appear every other Monday. See all episodes here.

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Mark Laporta is the author of Probability Shadow and Entropy Refraction, the first two novels in the science fiction series, Against the Glare of Darkness, which are available at a bookstore near you, on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. He is also the author of Orbitals: Journeys to Future Worlds, a collection of short science fiction, which is available as an ebook.

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