The Waterhole Read online

  “Janine, to put it as simply as I can, we’ve known for at least a century that it’s impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, as Einstein had predicted. So in order to travel or even get messages from the stars, we would need to have life spans of at least one thousand years or more. With our current medical technology, this is impossible and probably will be for a long time yet, so the thought was then: well if we can’t travel to the stars, maybe we could bring the stars closer to us, so to speak. Based on initial experiments done in Switzerland in 2009 with the particle accelerator, we began to see that it was theoretically possible to create a tiny black hole without the inhibitory effects of gravity to ‘peek’ into distant parts of the universe. We know that nothing physical could survive a journey through a black hole, but we discovered that electromagnetic waves, in particular radio waves and some others, can. This led us to believe that if we could build a machine powerful enough to create even just a tiny black hole without warping space or changing gravity, we in effect could create a window through which we could look back at the early universe, in fact even the Big Bang.”

  More hands shot up. Janine ignored them. “So when you switch the machine on, what in essence can we expect to hear or see?” she asked, her large brown eyes sparkling.

  Steve took the microphone. “Well, first let me correct you by saying that the machine has already been on for three days. It takes that much time to store enough power in the capacitors to generate the tiny ‘wormhole’, and the big moment is just under thirty minutes away. We’ve set the wormhole to open up five minutes after the Big Bang took place, which actually means we’ll be looking back thirteen billion years into the past, as it takes light that long to travel to us.”

  “But doesn’t that mean that it doesn’t exist anymore if it is thirteen billion years old?”

  “That’s where science gets interesting.” Steve smiled. “You see, we think that with this machine we may be able to in effect travel back in time to when the universe was five minutes old, kind of like a time machine, but for radio waves rather than people or objects.”

  A frown grew across the anchor’s forehead and she hesitated for just a moment too long. A tall man in a navy pinstripe suit saw his opening and immediately pounced. “Could it not be dangerous for us? When we think of black holes we think of these giant vacuum cleaners in space swallowing everything up. Might it not do that? Might we all just get swallowed up by this black hole that you’ve created?”

  Sheri shook her head. “No, we’re absolutely certain that this will not occur.”

  She paused and swallowed hard. In her mind this was not completely true, but admitting that now to the public would be political and economic suicide for her and the entire program. She pushed the thought away and continued. “Remember, we’re only warping the electromagnetic waves, not gravity like a natural black hole. Only radio waves can travel through this, not atoms. We’ve run simulation after simulation after simulation, and we have never seen anything at all to suggest that gravity would be altered in any way or form. People always panic about these things.” She caught Janine’s gaze, and could see the cogs turning inside the reporter’s head, and she wondered if perhaps the woman wasn’t quite as stupid as she’d initially thought. “When we split the atom, there were people who thought the Earth would blow up, which it didn’t. When we built the particle accelerator in Switzerland, some people thought we would be swallowed up then by a black hole, and of course we’re still here today to tell the tale. So no, it’s perfectly safe.”

  The President looked at his watch and said, “We have time for one more question, before I’d like to invite you all to watch the launch on the holographic screen here.”

  He scanned the room, his eyes stopping at the far left hand corner of the room. “Yes. The woman at the back wearing the pink scarf?”

  The rotund woman stood up and cleared her throat. “Am I going mad here, or does everyone at NASA today seem to be munching on peanuts?” She smiled, flicking a lock of pitch black hair off her eyes.

  Sheri laughed. “I’ll take this one,” she said. “So you noticed.” She was glad the woman had lightened the mood. “You aren’t going mad at all. It’s a tradition here at NASA to eat what we call ‘good-luck peanuts’ before a critical launch. It dates back to the sixties and the failure of the Ranger missions to the moon. Apparently, the story goes that the first successful Ranger mission to impact the moon occurred while a Jet Propulsion Laboratory staff member was eating peanuts. The staff jokingly decided that the peanuts must have been a good-luck charm, and so we’ve been munching on these things at a launch ever since.”

  “Well, I guess I might just sneak a few in then, too. Got to watch the figure,” she said with a grin. A slight chuckle erupted from the gallery.

  The President said, “Okay people, let’s go take a look at this incredible machine that took ten years to build, utilizing one billion watts of energy and just over a trillion US dollars.”

  Twenty minutes later, Janine Fuller had ushered her crew outside and ordered her cameraman to focus the cameras on the 1000-foot instrument that was now becoming more visible as the enormous support towers folded back away from it, one mile in the distance. It was without doubt, a magnificent marvel of science. It resembled a silver obelisk with rotating and flashing strobe lights flickering on and off at the metal base, moving upwards toward its pinnacle. A huge gold sphere about a hundred feet in circumference spun around the top of it at a thirty-degree angle. Electrical pylons, specifically built, directed power from the San Onofre nuclear reactor, allowing the charge in the sphere to grow. An enormous mirror five hundred feet high reflected sunlight onto the metallic tip of the obelisk, illuminating it like a giant diamond.

  Inside the control center, the air grew heavy with anticipation as the hustle and noise present earlier dissipated, all eyes now focused on the giant clock suspended above them.

  Steve and Sheri once again smiled at each other, with just three minutes and counting down. Sheri looked up at the image of Drew Murrey, who was heading the Australian operation.

  “You ready, Canberra?” she asked.

  “All systems go,” he responded in his Australian twang.

  A huge three-dimensional holographic map of the Earth was present in the middle of the control room. Two points of light were illuminated, one over California in the United States and the other over Mount Stromlo near Canberra in Australia, where it was night.

  * * * *

  Steve thought about all the years of dedication he had given to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Project, only to have it discontinued in 2038 when, after listening for some sixty years to signals from more than a billion stars, ET had failed to ring home. Even though he and his colleagues were bitterly disappointed, they had accepted the inevitable conclusion. ET didn’t ring home, simply because ET in all probability did not exist. Steve often thought about that and what it would mean if we were truly alone in the universe. It would be an extremely lonely universe indeed, and he was not yet ready to give up on that dream that someday we might meet an advanced civilization that would offer us the one thing that we humans needed more than anything else—hope. Comforting words from a society that had survived “technical adolescence,” who had not destroyed themselves while en-route to interstellar exploration. But when SETI was over, Steve realized that he could just sit around and mope about its failings, or he could move onward in another direction. So when he met Sheri, and she invited him to join her in “EMB,” he quickly accepted the offer.

  Perhaps “EMB” would find what SETI could not. Perhaps ET would ring home after all. Little did he know that EMB was indeed about to answer that very question, but at a terrifying price.

  “So, Steve, are you ready to see what the universe looked like thirteen billion years ago?” Sheri asked.

  “You bet ya!” he responded.

  The clock read -0.00.05 and counting.

  CHAPTER FIVE

&n
bsp; A great snapping sound and a roar of a hundred freight trains shattered the calm of a beautiful fall day. Birds fell from the sky in midair, while small children within ten miles of the facility screamed in terror. Dogs growled and snarled at their owners, and a gust of wind, seemingly from nowhere, blew pugnaciously across the landscape at one hundred miles per hour as the sky above seemed to begin to rotate around a pinpoint at the zenith. Waves that were moments ago only ripples on a nearby lake crashed fiercely against the shoreline and the sky turned a deep crimson color. Then, just as the sound was becoming unbearable, it abruptly abated. There was silence again. Birds began to sing out, and the sky returned to its tranquil pale-blue color.

  There was just one difference: the machine had developed what looked to be a concentrated beam of blackness piercing the heavens above.

  * * * *

  “Well, did we do it?” asked Sheri, her heart pounding. She raced over to the map of the planet and saw the point of blackness directed upwards above Pasadena then disappearing above the Earth’s atmosphere only to reappear over Canberra, Australia. Between the two beams was the invisible wormhole they had just created.

  “It looks promising,” she stated cautiously.

  She glanced over to a man in uniform frantically punching in numbers on a holographic keyboard.

  “Well …?”

  The man, displaying a deadpan face, was concentrating intently. He then slowly began to smile. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a singularity reaching back 13.4673 billion years into the past.” He paused, then typed in some more data, while the entire room waited in silence, a hundred pair of nervous eyes focused on him.

  “And … it’s … stable and holding!” he blurted out, punching the air above him.

  With that, the entire room burst into applause.

  “We’ve done it, honey,” said Sheri, as she leapt up into Steve’s arms. Steve caught her petite body, hugged her and then kissed her on the cheek. He whispered into her ear, “And we’re still here aren’t we, my little worrier?”

  Janine Fuller came racing up the stairs, beret almost falling off as she shoved her way through the traffic jam of people before planting her microphone directly in front of Sheri’s face.

  “So, Ms. Johnson, what’s next? There certainly is a buzz in the room.” She was grinning from ear to ear. “Has everything gone according to plan, then?” she asked, a hint of trepidation in her voice.

  Sheri frowned and gazed around the room. “How in hell’s name did you manage to get in here?”

  “Never mind that,” she brushed off, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Fill us in on the details. It all looks very promising, doesn’t it?”

  Sheri sighed. “We aren’t quite out of the woods just yet, Janine. We’ve opened up the wormhole or singularity, but the information or radio signals that will be traveling through it must now exit at station two, our receiving station in Australia, then be decoded by powerful computers, after which time the signal will be transformed into a form we can hear and see.”

  “And when can we expect that to happen?” asked Janine, her eyes still sparkling away, her thin eyebrows coming together.

  “The signal will take about five minutes to reach Canberra, then the computers will add on another minute or so, after that it gets relayed to the big screen in the middle of the room.”

  Janine looked up, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not with you.”

  “That’s because the screen is a virtual projected hologram which will only appear once the signal reaches Pasadena.”

  Janine was still looking around the room, and Sheri wondered whether she thought that if she stared long enough, it might magically materialize anyhow.

  “Now excuse me, Janine, but I have work to do. I’ll make time for your audience later on if I get the opportunity.”

  “But … What about—” said Janine, forced to stop in mid-sentence as Sheri swiftly retreated to her computer console.

  Janine steadied her beret, cleared her throat and continued on with yet another huge smile.

  “Well, it looks like we might have to get back to the story in a few minutes after this commercial break.”

  Janine’s image, which had been standing in eight billion living rooms across the planet, disappeared and was replaced by the image of the latest drive-itself version of a BMW which began doing a 360-degree spin, showing the viewers everything there was to know about the car without the need to visit a dealership.

  * * * *

  Steve was conversing with Drew Murrey in Australia by video link.

  “Drew, how’s it going there? We’re showing green lights across the board from our end. Any untoward problems on your side?”

  Drew appeared wearing a blue baseball cap.

  “Bloody brilliant, lads! It’s all go here, mate.”

  “Excellent, you should be receiving the signal any minute now if our calculations are correct.”

  “Yes, mate, coming in now …”

  The image of him blurred, then almost refocused before finally disappearing.

  “Looks like we have interference,” said Steve, as he frantically punched more data into his virtual console.

  “Yeah well that’s not surprising,” said Sheri, who was busy analyzing data on her computer terminal. “It’s to be expected as there’s an incredible amount of warping of the Earth’s magnetic field going on at the moment. It’ll correct as the computers start compensating for it.”

  * * * *

  On the other side of the planet, man-made machines went to work like they had never done before. A signal from thirteen billion light miles away passed through the artificially created wormhole, hit the giant receiving dish and made its way into the depths of the Mount Stromlo facility.

  A multitude of highly specialized and technological micro-components began splicing out the various frequencies, sorting them, unscrambling them and then finally making some sense of them. A task deemed impractical and impossible just ten years earlier, was now, with the exponential evolution of computer technology and the reverse graviton accelerometer, a reality.

  Two giant computer terminals came to life in the main control room of the Mount Stromlo facility, and moments later this signal was redirected to control in Pasadena whereby the huge 65-foot, three-dimensional image magically materialized above them.

  It lit up the room like a New Year’s Eve fireworks display, but the accompanying noise was unexpected and instantly deafening. The entire workforce covered their ears, their faces contorting with pain.

  Sheri quickly grabbed hold of a tall, skinny marine to her left, got his attention and shouted into his ear, “Filter the audio down now!”

  The marine swiftly began punching various instructions into his console.

  “We’re already down to one percent,” he yelled. “How low do you want to take it?”

  “At least ten percent of that.” Sheri’s voice was barely audible.

  He went back to work and within a couple of seconds, the room quietened down to a bearable hum.

  The sound they heard was completely discordant and rather unpleasant. There was no order or melodic tone to it, yet somehow it still managed to instill a feeling of awe in the listeners. A kaleidoscope of hazy images appeared in the room, and even though each person tried desperately to make some sort of sense of the configurations of light, colors and hues, there was no structure or form within it that could be deciphered by the human brain into any kind of pattern or sequence. It was just a random chaotic light show, yet inexplicably, completely and absolutely wonderful.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Janine had already made her way back to Sheri, and before Sheri knew it, once again had the microphone pushed up against her face.

  “Dr. Johnson, what the hell is that?” Janine smirked, narrowing her eyes into slits, her contorting round face quite obviously displaying her disappointment. She nevertheless managed a furtive half-smile for the cameras.

  Sheri was caught off guard. “It�
�s … It’s … um … Look, Janine, this really isn’t a good time. We cannot comment on any of this until we’ve done some analysis.”

  “And how long might that take?” asked Janine.

  “Impossible to say … Hours, days, weeks … This is something unprecedented in human history. We just don’t know.”

  “Cut!” yelled Janine, before marching brazenly off across the room, the discordant noise still audible in the background. She brushed past one of her crew members, who was eagerly devouring the remains of a Big Mac. Reaching over, she snatched the burger from his hand, slapped his wrist and threw it into the waste bin. “You should know better than that while on duty!” she snapped, then once again grabbed the microphone, brushed the hair off her face and forced a wooden smile. “Well, folks, I guess we may have gotten a fraction ahead of ourselves after all. I don’t think this is quite what NASA had expected to see. Anyhow, let’s return to our regular service. This is Janine Fuller signing off from CNNA here in the control room of NASA’s EMB project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.”

  “So, Steve, what do you make of it?” asked Sheri.

  “I guess it’s kinda what one might expect we’d get: chaos at the beginning of time?” With his hands on his hips he said, “No sense, no order? I must admit it is just a little disappointing though.”

  “There’s so much information to make sense of, I guess it might take years to work through the zillions of terabytes of data. Hopefully this will once and for all answer the age-old question about whether or not a single unification theory of the fundamental forces in physics exists. It could take years to know though, but at least we can now start answering some of those questions.” Sheri cleared her throat, then looked up at Steve, raising an eyebrow. “Janine didn’t seem very impressed. She was probably expecting to see the rings of Saturn or the face of God or something!”