Transmat World: Chapter 13, Episode 1
Near Mexico City, Saturday, November 13, 2145 A.D.
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The villa’s sand-colored stucco walls and red tiled roof accented the verdant hillside. Jungle vines shared space with spiny cactus as they surrounded the oasis of man. There were arches everywhere. Even the driveway had an arched gallery leading to an inner courtyard dotted with fountains, potted succulents, and cactus gardens. Black wrought iron festoons the tops of arched segments of courtyard walls and the bottom halves of arched windows.
Porfirio Valdez stood in the arched doorway of the foyer. Vince and Maria are just getting out of CompAireon rent car. Not just a conversion from a hydrogen burner, it was one of the first models built for compressed air using Transmat technology. CompAireon is a Transmat company; one of many. Vince bought BMW assets out of bankruptcy proceedings and used one of their plants to put a thousand people back to work. Vince spoke to the holographic head of Julie Newburg hanging in front of his hedset.
“Julie, can we stall the Board of Agreement for another week? Tell them I’m in the middle of a huge deal with a fresh water supplier. I have to finish an R&D project before I’m audit … before I meet with them.”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Julie and breaks the connection.
Vince and Maria approached the house.
“My little girl,” said Porfirio.
Maria gave her father a hug, and he kissed her cheek.
“Papi, good to see you.”
Ferdinand dodged heads with not a feather ruffled.
“Porfirio, it has been too long,” said Vince. “How are you?” Ookie stood on Vince’s shoulder on his hind feet with his little lizard fists against his hips and his head tilted up like a miniature General Patton.
“If I were feeling any better, Vince, they might arrest me. Well, nowadays with the lax drug laws I guess that doesn’t mean anything, but used to … oh, never mind. Please, come into the study where we can have coffee and talk. And how are your gadgets? I suppose it would be the polite thing to ask.”
“You know my hedbot’s name is ‘Ferdinand’ and Vince’s is ‘Ookie’, Papi, and why don’t you ask them yourself?”
“What nonsense,” huffed Porfirio and turned to lead them through the house.
Heading for the study, they walked through the living room past the kitchen, a hallway, and the breakfast nook. The house was full of dappled light making its way through palm leaves and large, multi-paned windows to fall on museum-quality objects: astrolabes, telescopes, and stone tablets with carvings and pictographs. Glass cases full of books and artifacts lined the study. An arched fireplace took up a third of a wall. A painting of nebulae and gas clouds hung above the mantel. A model of the solar system distended from the ceiling. A large, antique chalkboard framed with red oak stood in a corner, covered with arcs and circles and mathematical equations. Pictures of deep space clung by tape to the edges of the boards.
A maid in a russet dress and white apron was just leaving, having set four cups of coffee on the table. The coffee was in fat white cups like one would find in a 1950s diner. They were light as foam — vacuum flasks made of thin, tough carbon nanotube film. A glass jar of candied mushrooms sat in the middle of the table. A small, wizened gentleman in a gray, pinstripe suit and blue tie sat in a chair by the table.
“Ernie, what a surprise,” said Vince.
Professor Ernesto Barrera looked up at Vince, eyes sparkling with mirth and intelligence and moisture from his allergy to prickly pear cactus pollen. He got to his feet with surprising alacrity. Ernesto was professor of physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Hank and Vince consulted with him many times in the development of Transmat.
“Vince, good Lord, you’re still growing,” said Ernesto.
“Mainly out now; not up.”
“How is your mother?”
“Fine. She still lives in the same cottage by the ocean. You should go see her. She has the original Transmat booth. It’s been updated. You could transport right to the house.”
“I will find time.”
“Hello Ernie,” said Maria.
“Maria, you look more beautiful every time I see you,” said Ernesto.
“And you are looking spry.”
“I know that’s code for ‘old but still mobile,’ but at my age I’ll take what I can get. And how is Ferdinand and Ookie?”
“We’re fine, Professor Barrera. Thank you for asking,” chorused the hedbots as they both looked at Porfirio.
“Everyone, please, have a seat,” replied a sedate Porfirio. He decided not to be ruffled by talking objects. “Be careful, the coffee is hot.”
After asking about their health and how things were at the university, Vince broached the subject of the visit.
“So, Maria tells me you have detected gravity anomalies you are interested in,” says Vince.
“Believe me, Vince; you are interested in them as well,” said Porfirio. “You just do not know it yet. As you know, I specialize in archaeoastronomy and, in particular, the correlation of ancient observations with those of modern times. The very sphere you found, Vince, was an ancient star map with which I could compare the two. In the course of comparison, I found aberrations in modern observations difficult to explain.”
Porfirio got up and walked to the blackboard in the corner of the room, took a laser pointer from his pocket, and highlighted things on the board.
“Here is a simplified diagram of our galaxy. Earth is located here on the Orion arm. Here is the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy about 160,000 light years away and forty degrees down from the plane of the Milky Way. There is a series of deflections in star paths and changes in the velocity of stars like a curving trail of bread crumbs that runs from near Earth back to the Large Magellanic Cloud.”
“When you say near, just how near?” asked Vince.
“The nearest stars on this line are Alpha Mensae and 82 G. Eridani. They’ve been observed for the past several hundred years, except for a few Hit years when clouds were too thick. Both show deviations in course and velocity. Alpha Mensae is thirty-three light years away and 82 Eridani is twenty. The next star in this path is Epsilon Indi. It is not affected. That means whatever causes the abberations is still approaching the vicinity of Earth, and it will come as close as ten light years.”
“Which means it will miss Earth,” Maria said. “Why is it a big concern?”
“If I might answer that question, Porfirio,” said Ernesto.
“Yes, by all means.”
“The problem is there’s no natural phenomenon that can account for these anomalies. Even black holes with their tremendous gravity can’t affect things like this over the distances we are talking about. The only explanation making sense to a physicist such as myself is someone or something has discovered how to manipulate gravity.”
“But why is this mysterious ‘thing’ manipulating gravity?” asked Maria.
“Propulsion,” said Vince.
“Exactly,” said Ernesto.
“Somebody wants to get somewhere quick,” said Vince.
“With something big,” said Ernesto.
“How big?” asked Vince.
“By the forces being exerted and the time lines we observed, at least the mass of a class ‘G’ star. If we assume it came from the Large Magellanic Cloud, it has been on an 800,000-year journey. It must have been traveling over 250 million miles per hour at midpoint, 115 million meters per second in old units.”
“That’s almost 40 percent light speed,” said Maria.
“A curving path suggests it is changing course along the way,” said Porfirio. “That it has come to our neck of the woods on purpose.”
“What is the current velocity?” said Vince.
“Less than 50,000 miles per hour,” said Porfirio.
“Standing still compared to the midpoint velocity,” said Maria. “That means it has arrived at its destination.”
“You are correct,” said Ernesto.
“Let me see if I have this straight, gentlemen,” Vince said. “There is stellar-sized mass propelled by manipulating gravity that has traveled 160,000 light years on a journey of 800,000 years and is about to park next to Earth. Am I correct so far?”
“Si,” said Ernesto and Porfirio at the same time.
“This is something I would never have brought up to your father,” said Porfirio. “He had a predisposed attitude about the possibility of extraterrestial intelligence that made it difficult to talk about my work to him.”
“Believe me, I understand,” Vince said. “My next question is this. What entity can last the 800,000 years it took to make this journey?”
There was a pause, and then all human eyes panned to the hedbots, who looked at each other and back at the humans.
“What?” asked Ferdinand as Ookie clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back and forth on his hind feet while emitting a tuneless whistle.
“Robots,” said Porfirio.
“Yes, robots,” said Ernesto.
“Robots,” chimed in Vince and Maria as they looked at their respective hedbots in mock accusation.
“Despite the insidious nature of this conversation, I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Ookie. “This object is probably controlled by some sort of mechanism. But it may be controlled by an organic intelligence undergoing suspended animation, awakening only at intervals to check on things. Or it could be controlled by an inter-galactic automatic pilot the entire trip. It may even involve computers that convey the illusion of autonomous intelligence such as me or Ferdinand.”
“Yeah, what he said,” said Ferdinand.
“Okay, just me then,” said Ookie as he glares at Ferdinand.
