Edge of Infinity

CHAPTER 1

I’ve been considering when I should tell my story. Communicating what I have lived these past years may take some time, and I am not sure where to start. My name is Jefferson Alvarez. I am a theoretical geologist with the United States of North America (USNA), so my associates call me Stone. My journey has been one of continued discovery. Charting the constant expansion of the universe is a never-ending task.

I should explain my mention of the USNA. The union of Canada, the United States, and Mexico was unavoidable. A collective flag joins the stars and stripes, the maple leaf, and the eagle emblem. In the twenty-second century, these nations formed a coalition much like the Europeans (now largely Muslims) had done in the twentieth century. The goal was to end corporate corruption and bickering over immigration, trade, and natural resources. The union of the United States and Mexico was straightforward. For thousands of years Mexican workers migrating to the United States were matched by American retirees seeking sunshine in the resort towns of the Mexican Riviera. Europe and Asia outsourced production to the USNA. The declining growth of world population, mostly in China and India, is to a degree responsible. The USNA has a significant workforce since the Mexican area and some South American regions have high rates of population growth; Muslim influence in North America has been limited because the Hispanic majority has fully embraced Christianity.

My saga began the evening of July 1, 8515, roughly sixty-four hundred years after the core of the red giant Betelgeuse collapsed, causing the star to supernova. After working in my garden for most of the day, I was preparing to take a traditional water bath when I heard a loud explosion. Looking toward this sonic boom, I saw a glowing meteor arcing through the sky with several fragments close behind. They impacted behind a wooded butte about fifteen miles from my property. Strangely the meteor took a shallow approach to entry instead of the more common vertical angle.

I live in a rural part of Utah near the Nevada border. Geography texts teach that the region was arid and hot before the massive earthquakes of AD 2108—the ones that changed the coastline from California to Washington. Science had long thought that quakes in excess of magnitude nine were improbable there. A variety of global changes have redefined the climate of the western half of the continent over several thousand years. Giant redwood trees now cover once desolate land. People do not favor my secluded lifestyle but prefer to live in major metropolitan areas, or MMAs. Denver and Salt Lake City are known as MMA-Seven since they are now a metropolitan unit.

Roads are handy for short jaunts like the ones I used to take to the impact site. My all-terrain vehicle is a relic, but the solar turbine engine still whined sweetly whenever I had time to explore my surroundings in search of artifacts from the distant past. What I found strewn before me on one visit was extraordinary.

Smoldering craters resembling miniature volcanoes peppered the landscape. Approaching the nearest one, I found a large section of a copper-hued metal frame jutting from a jagged opening. The fuming trenches revealed more artifacts. I found thermos-size canisters lined up neatly in a fractured but mostly intact closet-like structure. I tried to lift one out for inspection but could not budge it. I assumed the objects to be homegrown space junk returning to Earth, but to my surprise the heavyweight containers have turned out to be priceless.

Several months passed with little fanfare, and I was assigned to the planet Neptune. I am now orbiting Triton, one of its moons. Engineers commissioned a final review of a platform designed to support laser regenerators on the frozen surface. The equipment is necessary to boost the link with ships traveling beyond the solar system. A secondary project is to install a refueling complex that will capture gas from the nitrogen-emitting geysers that dot the moon. This station will refuel ships that have traveled far from Earth.

I was recalculating drilling depth recommendations when a flash message arrived. Analysis of the crashed artifacts had produced fascinating results. The metal frames were not carbon-based and were estimated to be sixteen billion years old. The universe is just under fourteen billion years old. This inconsistency has left experts befuddled. Opinion runs rampant, and some raise the possibility that the big bang was not the beginning of existence.

Astronomers have studied the flight path of the debris, and the trajectory points to the Orion constellation. They suggest the wreckage originated from the vicinity of Betelgeuse. When the star went supernova, the blast released ejecta at one-tenth the speed of light. At this rate, it would have taken sixty-four hundred years to reach Earth. The canisters proved to be the biggest mystery. Etched with micro-hieroglyphic symbols, they were produced by an advanced alien race.

How the debris escaped total destruction is unknown. Popular theory is that a starship fell victim to the exploding star. The mystery will eventually be unraveled in a series of seemingly unrelated events. Earth’s United Space Venture (USV) will play a major part in critical explorations.

CHAPTER 2

Ancient scholars held that only objects with no mass (energy) could travel at the speed of light. They argued an object’s mass would otherwise become infinite. Contradicting this accepted theory was risky since it could cost a scientist professional credibility, but unconventional thinkers made the impossible a reality. Way back in the twentieth century a new theory would lead to the development of warp-speed travel. The idea of time contraction/expansion had gained acceptance, and scientists developed a way to propel matter by shielding it in a dimensional bubble that canceled its mass. Space travelers no longer experienced time at a different rate than people on Earth. This was a difficult concept to imagine, and few even contemplated the possibility.

The shroud made travel at light speed possible; however, it did not work at speeds faster than light. That would come as research continued and the ability to expand and compress space-time evolved. Of course, travelers were then doomed to return to a world that had grown older or that they had even outlived depending on the distance traveled. These issues would be solved as the laws of physics were refined to include the laws of equilibrium. This was another difficult concept but no more preposterous than the belief that faster-than-light speed was impossible. This speed-expansion theory was grounded in the previous big bang and in the distance at which energy was emitted in the first seconds of the expansion. The key word is previous.

Think of the ghostly spirits that we see on rare occasions. We can see them and they can see us. We are in parallel worlds but share identical physical space. We exist as matter and they as energy. Though we cannot touch them, they can move objects in our reality and can touch us. The ability to work in both worlds was critical to enabling light-speed and faster-than-light-speed travel. Travel at faster-than-light speed was made possible by transporting a spaceship into the parallel world with the craft’s mass cloaked in a bubble. Future research will reveal that many dimensions exist and that in rare instances individuals have experienced dimensional crossover while in the dream state. This would account for those dreams that happen in a familiar place but make no sense in waking reality.

The line Beam me up, Scotty became the motto of scientists working on transporter technology. Converting matter to energy and restoring it at a distant location proved difficult, but years of trial and error in transporting first inanimate objects and then living specimens finally paid off; however, during the development phase, transporters sometimes failed to reanimate test subjects in their original form, and some subjects never arrived at the receiving end.

Project Discovery, kept secret from the public, is testing wormhole travel with an artificially intelligent being at the controls of an interdimensionally capable probe. Named Apollo AI-One, this being is a new-generation robotic pilot. In the past, death-row inmates were sent on exploratory probes to distant parts of the galaxy. Placed in deep sleep, they traveled into space never to return. Justice was served without technically taking a life. A decline in crime and criminals eventually ended this practice.

Experts were uncertain at first what purpose the canisters served. Heavy-duty forklifts were needed to load them onto haulers. A single canister weighed just over a hundred tons. Months of exhaustive study revealed little about them. The lead researcher decided to do an X-ray analysis of a canister with disastrous results. The canister penetrated the rebar-reinforced concrete basement roof, shot through fifteen floors, and flew out into space. Initially no one realized that the gravitational force of dark energy, once activated, had launched the canister. This is the same force that is expanding the universe.

The discovery of a triggering mechanism led engineers to develop an adjustable ignition device. A fuel cell was installed in a shuttlecraft used for short flights. With the engines up and power boosted, the shuttle rose. Pilots maneuvered the craft around the tarmac, demonstrating that the new power source was responding.

Test pilots completed a shakedown flight of the newly named Infinity with its new power source, reaching an altitude of two hundred miles on a quick trip around the globe. The Infinity reached warp 9.9999, traveling one light-year in two minutes and twenty-two seconds. The chase craft following the Infinity made its trip in sixty-six minutes. Months of testing proved the Infinity ready for the journey. The canister technology remains a mystery, but scientists theorize that the device interacts with the magnetic influence of dark energy.

Project Discovery was ready for its mission to V4641, a micro-quasar black hole near the center of the Milky Way sixteen hundred light-years from Earth. The Infinity would cover the distance in almost three days, traveling at warp 9.9999.

As the Infinity’s mass was transferred to the alternate dimension, sensors would measure gravitational pull on the ship. Scientists believed the probe would enter the black hole with no gravitational influence. Given that black holes swallow any matter or energy, a wormhole could be waiting on the inside to transport that captured intake. Traveling inside the wormhole, the Infinity was expected to reappear in a distant location. The black hole at the opposite end of the wormhole would also capture matter and energy. In fact, black holes emit energy known as Hawking radiation, and the Infinity would emerge in the protected dimensional bubble.

The launch date, October 15, 8515, came with little fanfare except for the few involved. At t-minus ten minutes, all systems were go and the countdown began. The probe left for space strategically in orbit with the moon as a buffer should a detonation of the engine and of the power source occur. At warp 9.99 the central processor would switch off the hydrogen generators, transferring engine intake feed to the alien power source. The probe would need ten seconds to reach warp 9.9999, a speed of 59.812 billion kilometers (37.165 billion miles) a second. Even at this rate, it would take six months to cross our galaxy.

My communicator jarred me awake at 3 a.m. My presence was requested in Beijing. With Project Discovery underway, I was on call should the mission team need my assistance. The time difference with my destination was fifteen hours. It was 6 p.m. in Beijing. I consumed a breakfast pack while waiting on my veranda, the rising sun announcing a new chapter in my life.

I was on the board of the government’s Space Exploration for Advanced Research Commission. The average age for a tenured member was 125. With an expected life span approaching two hundred years, I still had a few miles left at only 110 years old.

I would arrive in Beijing in under a half-hour, just enough time to sign all the necessary documents for clearance to be briefed. Having signed, I was handed an official folder marked Eyes Only. The encrypted message was short. The artificial pilot had made contact. The probe had reemerged in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy seventy thousand light-years from Earth.

The trip would normally take four months at warp 9.9999. The Infinity had taken just under three days to travel sixteen hundred light-years to the black hole. This could only mean the probe had entered a wormhole after exiting the black hole in the center of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. Apollo used a replicated version of telepathy to access computers in MMA-6, which includes Houston and Dallas. There was no delay in transit of the data. Wormhole travel would open wide exploration of the galaxy.

People filled the conference room, eagerly awaiting the chairman’s arrival. The crowd included the best minds in aeronautical engineering and research. There were several familiar faces, most notably leading authorities on space travel and CEOs from companies hoping to land contracts for the project. Alan James Perron, appointed to lead the discussions, had gathered the preeminent specialists for the assignment. As the president’s right–hand man, he shouldered some of the burden, giving the president time to keep three distinct nations running in harmony. A. J., as he preferred to be called, was a veteran investigative journalist turned political adviser who could charm men as easily as he did members of the opposite sex. His strength was his reputation for dealing with complex issues in an unbiased way. Incapable of lying and immune to the influence of lobbyists, A. J. could never have been a politician. He would manage a project using only the best people he could find to do the work.

This was a refreshing change considering the repeated failures caused by the old government’s cronyism, mismanagement, and downright stupidity. In that era, politicians used their influence to undermine the authority of presidents. The two-party system eventually gave way to a more representative government that eliminated special-interest groups by removing lobbyists from the crafting of laws and from decision-making.

Bureaucracies had become streamlined business undertakings with androids replacing civil servants, leaving humans to manage the government. The terms democracy, republic, socialist, fascist, communist, and dictatorship had no place in the world order. Managing societies in the people’s interest required governments to operate like corporations. The self-indulgence that had marked politicians and chief executives in the past was no longer tolerated. All major corporate bosses reported directly to Perron. Golden parachutes were abolished, and bonuses were based strictly on results.

Ladies and gentlemen, A. J. said, "yesterday at 0913 hours a transmission arrived from deep-space probe Infinity with this message: ‘This is command pilot Apollo AI-1 reporting as ordered. I have arrived at a destination in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy and have emerged from a massive black hole at the center. I am in orbit one million kilometers from the vortex, awaiting instructions.’

During the trip from Earth to V4641, no contact occurred with other life forms, A. J. said, summarizing the transmission. "Several satellites were spotted including the original Voyager 1 launched from Earth in the year 1977. It was just over fourteen thousand astronomical units from Earth. The New Horizons probe launched in the twenty-first century not only explored Pluto but made discoveries that the government decided to cover up, as was the practice back then. The most significant find was an abandoned spacecraft that had crashed on Pluto. The government did not reveal this find until 2045. Approaching V4641, sensors detected a surge in gravitational force trying to drive the probe beyond warp 9.9999, but the ship was in its protective dimensional bubble. Travel time in the tunnel was brief, roughly 10.7 seconds at a warp equivalent of nineteen. The rate was just over sixty quadrillion kilometers per second. Sensors detected particle beam tracking that aligned the probe in the tunnel. The energy appeared random with no intelligence directing it. Wormhole theorists received the sensor recordings for their analysis. The probe reemerged from the destination black hole without incident.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we know. Tomorrow morning I will turn this meeting over to my distinguished guests. We must draft a reply to the artificial pilot. I have a few final words before we adjourn for the evening. We now know that a wormhole connects V4641 with the black hole at the center of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. We can assume that a network of wormholes must connect galaxies in the far-reaching corners of the known universe. We intend to explore the extent of these connections. Soon we will visit the stars in the Orion constellation where the artifacts found by Doctor Alvarez originated. We hope to find evidence of the artifacts’ creators and to visit our galactic neighbors. We anticipate no hostility since they are most likely intellectually superior. Having mastered interstellar travel, we expect acceptance as an intelligent species. Project Centaur will be a search for ET.

I decided to retire to my luxury suite for an evening of rest and relaxation. But first, I needed a hot meal. As I was leaving the conference room, a firm hand grabbed my shoulder from behind. Turning abruptly, I found myself staring into the eyes of the most magnificent-looking woman I had ever seen. Her warm and gentle smile left me mumbling like an idiot. Something came to my lips that may have sounded like hello. The woman introduced herself as Dr. Samantha Williams, but her friends called her Sam. I stammered