Icicle, p.12
Icicle, page 12
“It’s pretty personal, actually,” Thorpe said, blushing again, but I can tell you that eDaphne had a much smoother transition than I had what seems so long ago now.” He smiled at both Daphne and her electronic sister. “I had to figure everything out for myself,” Thorpe said, “whereas Daphne already knew my history and so was far better prepared for the transition. Furthermore, she and I have had long conversations about what I went through, so she was thoroughly prepared for what happened.” He looked at eDaphne. “Why don’t you give us your perspective. I think that’s what most interests Sally and Brad.”
Both Sally and Brad nodded as eDaphne picked up the story. “I suspect that coming out of the haze of the transition, each person will interpret the events according to his or her own personal history and perspective. Because you two must understand the details, I’m going to get a bit personal.” She smiled at Sally and reached out as if to take her hand. “When I first met Thorpe, I really flipped for him, and I was pretty sure he was into me too. I was frustrated that there seemed no way to consummate the relationship.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “This must have been on my mind as I went under sedation. When I began to waken, I didn’t realize that I was eDaphne. The very first sensations I had were highly sexual. Thorpe swears that all he did was call my name and reach out to me, but I can tell you that what I experienced was intensely erotic.” Nobody said anything, but there were smiles around the table. “That may say more about me than anything else, but I think you guys,” she pointed at Sally and Brad, “need to know about this.”
“Wow!” Kimberly said. “When do I get to do this?” She looked at Braxton.
“Focus, people,” Fredricks said. Looking at Sally and Brad, he asked, “Do either of you have any questions?”
“Daphne…I mean eDaphne,” Sally said, “have you experienced any negatives?”
“Not really. It’s pretty overwhelming at first, but Thorpe made the transition much easier. For me, it took a few minutes to get the hang of moving with or against a particular data stream. Oh…be sure to learn how to handle your tensors first thing.”
At that comment, Kimberly’s face dropped.
eDaphne giggled and said, “Don’t worry about it, Kimberly. You don’t have to know higher math to use them. It becomes instinctive almost immediately.” She turned back to Sally. “Any other questions?”
“I’m sure I do, but I have to think about it for a while first.”
eDaphne turned to Brad. “What about you, Brad?”
“What if I want to come back? I mean, what if I want to return to flesh-and-bone?”
“Let me answer that,” Fredricks said. “Right now, that’s not possible. I’ve got some people working on the underlying concept. Obviously, one would need an available receptacle—a body without sentience. In principle, we can do this, but there is a huge ethical element that we have not yet overcome here in America. In several countries—perhaps, but not here.” He paused and looked around the table. “The other option would be to transfer an e-version back to the flesh-and-bone original. We have no idea what that would entail. For all I know, the result could be a blithering idiot.”
“We could try it with Max and eMax,” Thorpe said.
“I don’t think so!” came simultaneously from both Daphne and eDaphne.
Chuckles around the table.
“I want to put that subject on the back burner,” Fredricks said. “Is this a deal-breaker for you, Brad?”
“No,” Brad answered slowly, “I just wanted to hear what you had to say. Based on Daphne’s experience, I guess I’m looking forward to it.” He grinned broadly.
“How about you, Sally?” Fredricks looked at her with warmth.
“I guess…” she looked down at her lap. “I guess it’s the only way we can get where we want to go.”
EARTH-MOON L2—THE SWARM
A week following the Denver meeting, eDaphne watched eSally and eBrad approach a portal in the Earth-Moon L2 swarm, while she hovered nearby with Thorpe and Braxton. Next to them, eMax purred quietly, snuggled to one of the strange tensors.
“Basically,” eBrad said to no one in particular, “this is like a door into another room. It just happens that the other room is somewhere between four hundred eleven thousand and four hundred eighty-two thousand klicks away from here, depending on where the linked portal is in GEO at the moment. This portal face and the one in GEO are congruous.”
“And consider,” eSally added, “that the connecting wormhole is in constant motion with respect to normal space since the origin—here—and the destination—there—are in constant motion with respect to the solar system reference space, and relative to each other.”
“I have a question,” eDaphne said. “These portal pairs are all over the place, crisscrossing each other, passing through each other as their relative orbital positions change. What is the architecture of the connecting wormholes? Do they end up as an infinitely twisted rat’s nest?”
“We haven’t completely worked out the math,” eBrad said, “but we think they simply pass through each other like beams of sunlight.”
eSally nodded. “Let’s get on each side of the portal,” she said to eBrad. “You take the dependent end, and I’ll stay here. Then let’s insert tensors into the mechanism from each side and see what happens.”
eBrad grunted as he slipped through the portal into GEO, leaving a tensor behind to facilitate communication. “Are you ready, Girl?” he said.
“I am,” eSally answered.
eDaphne watched carefully as eSally inserted a tensor into the portal so that it did not merely pass through, but instead merged with the surrounding structure. From the other side, although it was not apparent to eDaphne, eBrad did the same thing.
“The amount of power being sucked into this device is impressive,” eSally said. “The power is being used to create an extended Casimir Field and keep it open.”
“Can you duplicate it?” Thorpe asked.
“It looks like it,” eSally answered. “I need to examine more closely to see exactly how the Casimir Field is generated.”
“This end is different,” eBrad said. “It looks like…” Contact with him ceased as the Earth-Moon L2 portal face assumed a silvery solid appearance, and his tensor collapsed and disintegrated.
SERVER SKY—GEO
eBrad inserted a tensor into the dependent portal framework and began poking around. There wasn’t much to see. Power flowed from the other side, but a relatively small amount compared to what eSally said was flowing into the originating portal. A portal mechanism was virtually nonexistent. All he could find was an insubstantial energy ring. He wrapped his tensor around the ring when it suddenly collapsed. His connection with his Earth-Moon L2 tensor truncated. He was alone and isolated.
Without moving, eBrad considered his options. I know of at least one other portal, and I know where Braxton’s personal swarm is located. He checked his surroundings. Must be in another GEO swarm. So much for that.
eBrad examined his surroundings more carefully, and that’s when he found the 5-centimeter silvery disk that seemed to be electrostatically attached to a thinsat. He latched onto it electronically and scrutinized it. One side was a dull, silvery color, like a coin that had been in circulation for a while. The other was deep, featureless black. The silvery side possessed a faint electric field; the black side was electronically featureless. His intellect told him that the disk had to be connected in some way to the portal. He carefully examined the structure of the electric field on the silvery face. As he gently stroked it with an electrical current, a space next to the disk expanded to become the dependent end of the portal.
Remaining where he was, eBrad sent a tensor through the renewed portal and told the others that they needed to join him for a demonstration.
Everyone breathed a virtual sigh of relief and passed one-by-one through the portal, followed by eMax and the strange tensor. eDaphne connected with Thorpe and Braxton as they settled into the GEO Swarm. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“I suspect eBrad found a way to shut down the portal from the dependent end,” Braxton said.
eBrad placed himself so that he had a commanding view of the others. “I think,” he said, “that I’ve found a significant piece of the puzzle.” He showed them the disk and stroked its face electrically. The portal collapsed. He handed it around with the admonition not to stroke the silvery face.
As the disk passed by eDaphne, she examined it closely. The backside was completely featureless. She turned it toward the Sun—no reflection of any kind. She rotated it at an angle to the Sun—still wholly featureless. She spoke up. “I think the backside absorbs all incident light.”
eSally reached for the disk and looked closely at the backside, duplicating what eDaphne had just done. “I agree,” she said. “No reflection at all.”
eBrad retrieved the disk and opened the portal. He moved to the back of the portal and then motioned the others to join him. When eDaphne looked at where the back should have been, she could not see any indication of the portal at all. It was if the portal were not there. She moved to the front and sent a tensor through. Then she moved to the back and sent a tensor through the space occupied by the portal. It passed through the space and met her at the front. eDaphne showed the others.
“Hey, guys,” eSally said. “This is all interesting, but we need to get back to finding out how these things work. eBrad and I have a good handle on our new environment. We know how to get from here to there, and we’ve got backups in place should anything go wrong.” She gave everyone a virtual shy smile. “You guys need to leave us alone to do our investigation.”
DENVER—PHOENIX LABS
Sally and Brad sat at another previously used table, but this time in their lab. While the table left something to be desired, the equipment in the lab was as modern as tomorrow, the best money could buy. Joining at the table as holoimages, eSally and eBrad were in deep discussion with their flesh-and-bone counterparts.
“The portals are definitely based on a stabilized version of a Morris-Thorn wormhole, which is itself based upon the Einstein-Rosen bridge,” eSally said. “Originally, they postulated using exotic matter—or non-baryonic matter—to create the bridge, but back in the early twenty-first century, NASA’s Harold White found a way to do this with normal matter.” She smiled with her hand in front of her mouth. “That’s what these do. The portal is established by separating two plates holding a Casimir field, applying continuously greater power as the plates separate. That’s what stroking the disk does,” she added.
“When the Casimir field is initially established,” eBrad said, “a mechanism within the portal infrastructure generates the disk, which we are calling a hyper-disc from now on. The hyper-disc must be physically transported to whatever point the portal will connect.”
“We have deposited detailed 3-D diagrams and circuits for all the elements into your main computer,” eSally said. “You should be able to construct a prototype from these.”
“So,” Brad said, “you’re certain that you found everything we will need? What about the power requirements?”
eBrad answered. “Your LANR will handle at least two portals in the general cislunar region, but beyond that or more than those will require a lot more power.”
“Here’s the cool thing,” eSally said. “The Earth-Moon L2 swarm generates about five terawatts. The power is collected and supplied to the various portals for access to GEO, LEO, and even Earth. One of the portals is reserved for power trunks that feed power to GEO and LEO portals.”
“Could we bring one of those trunks through a portal to here?” Sally asked.
“In principle, sure,” eSally said, “but we know virtually nothing about the existing system, nothing about the overall power distribution, not to mention that we know nothing about who made it or its purpose.”
“I don’t disagree,” eBrad said, “but what about the unidentified tensor that seems to accompany eMax everywhere he goes?”
“We might want to ask Thorpe or Braxton about that,” eSally said shyly.
“So, we leave it alone,” Brad said. “We copy, we duplicate, but we don’t disturb.”
Everyone agreed.
“Let’s turn to, then,” Brad said. “Sally and I will work together with Thorpe and Braxton on the manufacturing infrastructure, and you guys hang out, help us where you can, and keep us honest. That okay?”
Everyone consented. Two chairs slid back, the chairs in the holoimages vanished, and Sally with Brad turned toward the lab bench while eSally and eBrad hovered as holoimages.
A week later, Thorpe and Braxton dropped in on Sally and Brad as they assembled the finishing touches of their breadboard portal. Electronic elements spread out over the lab bench, culminating in a transparent doorway-size frame standing on the floor next to the end of the bench. eSally and eBrad hovered in the background.
“Where’s Jackson?” Thorpe asked.
“He’s tied up in LA,” Brad said. “He’s watching on his Link…decided not to appear holographically.”
Daphne, Kimberly, and Dale stood off to the side. eDaphne hovered in the background with eSally and eBrad.
“Everybody ready?” Sally asked. After a pregnant pause, she threw the power switch.
At first, there was no visible reaction at all. Then the space within the frame began to sparkle. This went on for several minutes.
“What’s the power draw?” eBrad asked.
Sally told him. “It’s still increasing,” she added.
He nodded and looked at eSally.
Then, without any prior indication, the space within the frame turned the same dull silver that the hyper-discs displayed.
“Power draw has stabilized,” Sally said.
Brad walked behind the frame. “From here, there is no frame,” he said and picked up a hyper-disc from the edge of the lab bench, handing it to Sally. “Here, Sally, you do it.”
She stepped to the other side of the room and stroked the silvery side of the hyper-disc. As a portal opened in front of her, the silver face of the doorway frame near Brad dissolved into a view of Sally. As she walked around the room with the hyper-disc in her hand, the slave portal followed her like a puppy.
She stopped and looked like she was about to step through the portal. Thorpe said sharply, “Stop!” He smiled at her. “I know how confident you are of what you have built, but we need to do several tests before committing a human life to the process.”
“Not a process,” Brad muttered, “it’s a portal. It either is or isn’t.” He pulled a pen out of his pocket and tossed it through the portal to Sally. “Catch, Sally!” Then he grinned at Thorpe and stepped through the portal.
DENVER—PHOENIX LABS
“What’s your status, Daphne?” Fredricks asked, looking directly at her holoimage. Since he had moved his entire operation from Los Angeles to the Denver Tech Center, he found he was spending a lot of time talking with insubstantial holoimages, making things happen thousands of kilometers distant.
“You should have delivery of the habitat this morning,” Daphne answered.
Despite his familiarity with the technology and his nearly everyday use, Fredricks still marveled at how real the holoimages were. Visually, Daphne was as real as if she were in the room with him. Missing were her smell and the sound of her feet on the floor. He stepped into the Greater Hall, one of two large halls on the ground floor, as Sally and Brad joined him.
“Hi, Daphne,” Sally said with a friendly wave. “The habitat just arrived,” she added, looking at Fredricks as Brad carried it into Greater Hall and rolled it out on the floor.
Dale’s holoimage appeared. “Hey,” he said, “I wanted to watch you guys work.”
“Me, too!” Kimberly said, appearing next to Dale.
Brad inflated the dome-shaped, fifty-square-meter habitat. Its thin, strong, flexible, transparent polymer wall billowed up, waving slightly. On one side, a flexible lock extended into the room—two meters high, two meters deep, and a-meter-and-a-half wide. Sally pushed her way through the magnetically sealed outer curtain and then through the inner one.
“Will that seal hold at Earth-Moon L2?” Brad asked.
“The pressure will be an oxygen-enriched half-atmosphere,” Daphne said. “Like atop a six thousand-meter mountain, but more oxygen,” she added.
“Once we get the portal established, we’ll bring in more substantial lock doors,” Daphne said.
Sally checked the inside of the habitat carefully, looking for any flaws that could potentially cause it to fail in space. As she exited, Dale said, “Someone, please tell me again why we need this habitat. With a portal at Earth-Moon L2, all a person has to do for anything at all, like taking a leak or grabbing a PBJ, is pass through the portal. We have the portal on this side terminate in a lock, so we don’t start sucking air from here to there.”
“Murphy’s Law has been part of my life all my life,” Thorpe said. Braxton nodded with a wide grin. “What could happen?” Thorpe asked.
Daphne began counting off possible things on her fingers. “Power loss, component failure, destruction of this complex…” She considered silently. “Even whoever or whatever controls the other portals turning out to be a bad guy…”
“Okay…okay,” Dale said, “you convinced me.”
“Alright then,” Fredricks said, “let’s collapse the habitat and pack it for transport to Earth-Moon L2.”
Dale’s holoimage moved to two large containers against the far wall, one red and the other blue. A pipe led from each into the lock where they connected to two coiled hoses, one red and the other blue, each fitted with pressure quick-disconnects that were distinctly different from each other. Next to the hoses, two cylindrical bladders nearly as long as the capsule, one red and one blue, hung on the bulkhead.
Brad stepped over to Dale and said, “Hypergolic fuel elements. UDMH—unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine,” he pointed to the red container, “and nitrogen tetroxide,” he pointed to the blue one. “Once the portal opens in LEO, someone will pass through, attach the bladders, and fill them. That takes manhandling, which means one of the guys. Jackson is the boss, so that leaves me and you. I’m obviously more able to manhandle that stuff, so…” He grinned at Dale.
