[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I try to post new chapters about every two weeks, but I’m currently also rewriting Fall, so there will sometimes be short stories and vignettes if I don’t have a new chapter ready. The next chapter is planned for the week of February 21st.]

Previous: Chapter 33

Fits and starts. Flicker knew that was how real research worked. And things had been going too smoothly.

Doc had built a test rig, Stella had provided a repurposed Xelian construction shelter for a deep space station, and Three had towed it into position with one of her ships–and set up the sunshade.

It was in a solar orbit at what Journeyman called a ‘sweet spot’: It was closer to the the sun, so the net total of orbital kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy matched that of the surface of the Earth as closely as possible. That cut down on the compensation he had to do to port there and back–distance didn’t matter, but energy did.

He had been able to establish a connection to a small, spherical space that should have a speed of light that varied radially–lower toward the center and the same as Earth’s at the outer edge. It didn’t start off containing any mass, and had no difference in vacuum pressure at the boundary. Everything else, he still wasn’t sure about.

The first automated tests on the restricted portal he’d set up before porting out for safety had gone fine, as far as Doc was concerned. No explosions or waves of mass to energy conversion had come back when the small test probes went through. The probes hadn’t come back, either. But no one had really expected that–the far side was likely to be pretty unforgiving to anything electronic. That had been yesterday.

In the meantime, Flicker had practiced flying in space–slowly–without panicking. She could manage about two g’s now. The Skystone protected her from vacuum, but she kept a full pressure mask on; air made it much easier to talk. She still kept reaching out reflexively for mass for stabilization–but she was down to about to fifty times a second. When she was calm.

Now she floated beside Journeyman, doing her best to stay calm while he muttered to himself and retraced a section of pattern on the base slab so they could continue the tests. They’d tried a few more probes–nothing had come back yet except some barely detectable radiation. Not the magic homing bead, not any of the diamond nanoparticles from Doc’s mechanical release device, not the end of the titanium wire Flicker had poked through.

Then something only Journeyman could detect had started to vary slightly, and the radiation readings had worried Doc, so there was nothing for it but to recheck. Flicker had nothing constructive to contribute, and she knew better than to pester Journeyman with questions he didn’t know the answers to yet. She thought longingly about the nearest significant mass. Venus was about twenty million kilometers thataway. Not much help.

Three’s ship and the Learning Is About To Occur kept watch from several hundred kilometers out. The two of them were doing their best to cheer her up and distract her while she waited–with mixed success. At least it gave Flicker someone to complain to with millisecond latency. DASI’s main nodes and Doc were both back on Earth, minutes away.

“Is Journeyman still ranting about the gloves on his suit?” asked Three.

“Yeah,” said Flicker. "It’s a fair complaint, though. We’re doing everything in a high vacuum and Journeyman is a gesture and pattern magician. Nobody has yet been able to make pressure gloves that don’t interfere with fine manipulation.“

"It is an interesting problem,” said Learning. He had a pleasant tenor voice and a habit of casually tossing out mind-boggling suggestions. "I wonder if a magician could use a biogestalt to operate a humaniform remote for vacuum work. Has that been tried?“

"Ah… not that I know of,” said Three. "And I’m not sure a biogestalt would be able to use probability manipulation at all.“

"Surely you jest. The most impressive act of probability manipulation on Earth that I’m aware of was performed by a biogestalt.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Three, saving Flicker the trouble.

“Flicker’s serial contingent causality reconnection during the Xelian fleet attack, to avoid the randomized beam strikes. It was powerful enough that subtle effects from it were detected propagating outward from the far side of the portal zone to Grs'thnk, though they were not recognized as such at the time.”

“It was detectable in another universe?” said Three. "That’s both disturbing and something Flicker and I should already have been told. Why–“

"Just a moment, please,” said Flicker. "Since when am I a biogestalt?“

"Does the term offend?” said Learning. "You refer to that part of you as your 'high speed mind’, but it seems to operate in a similar fashion. That is clear from the mishaps you’ve experienced. I did a first principles analysis during the period of concern over your commandeering of computational resources. I concluded that it matched a high speed biogestalt multiplicity cascade better than an unconstrained AI launch, which reassured the aid mission leadership somewhat.“

"And you didn’t tell DASI?” said Flicker. "Hell, why didn’t you tell me?“

"I didn’t have permission. Biogestalt theory is on the restricted list, because of the potential for abuse–it contributes to several significant Grs'thnk social problems, though disagreement about how much makes that a politically sensitive topic. Official aid mission policy is to avoid sharing new problems with Earth when they’ve barely started helping with your existing ones. And Doc has an unfavorable view of biogestalts which is well justified at Earth’s current technology level. The embassy leadership is discussing sharing the data with Director Reinhart and DASI given its new relevance, but, like all political questions, a long period of wrangling argument is required first. There is a book you might find helpful, once it becomes available.”

“What is it?” asked Flicker

“A History of Biogestalt Development and Pathology, Volume One, Fourteenth Edition. It’s the standard reference used in the biogestalt prep sequence at the Grs'thnk Naval Academy. I’m told it’s a bit dry for bios, but I found it fascinating.”

“A biogestalt in my own body… I need that book yesterday. I need that book last month. Wait a minute–the restriction you have on talking directly to DASI is a political one, set by the aid mission, correct?”

“Yes,” said Learning. "However, it–“

Flicker bared her teeth. "You want to share data responsibly–but you can’t, because you’ll get in trouble if you do. And I have a veto. They gave me one. I’ve never used it before, but I think I’m about to. Three, what’s the relevant agreement?”

“That would be the Preliminary Protocol on Data Sharing, Restrictions and Limitations. But I’m not sure–”

“Great. I’ll veto it, then ask Learning to share any data whose absence is compromising Earth’s military security. I know there’s an agreement for that. And they can sort everything out again, after the transfers.”

“Flicker,” said Three. "This is politics. Will you at least let me try finesse? Prime is busy, but give me ten minutes and the threat of your veto, and I bet I can get things moving. Without calling into question an agreement that was very painful to negotiate in the first place. It won’t be an idle threat, and they’ll know it. And, just between us biogestalts, I have a stake here too.“

"Oh. Yeah. I guess they could pull Learning out on military orders. I can’t do anything about that. Okay, try your way. But make sure they know I’m pretty angry. If this 'multiplicity cascade’ is a documented problem, DASI and I not knowing about it probably cost me a couple hundred subjective years during my bender. And who knows what else.”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

Flicker thought for a moment. "And Learning? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to blow up. You were just trying to help.“

"No apology needed,” he said. "Learning is about to occur. I am content.“

"Heh. Yeah. Some already has. And I need to go–looks like Journeyman has finally fixed whatever it was. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. And good luck.”

*****

Flicker sped up her mind so everything happened with glacial slowness, and she clamped down hard on her hand with her power–no molecular rearrangement allowed. A bit extreme, maybe, but she didn’t know yet what was required, and she didn’t want to find out by not doing enough.

She flicked the tip of her left little finger into the portal, then immediately pulled it back out again. It was on the far side for about a microsecond. There had been a slight tingling from her proprioception sense, but that was all.

She hadn’t lost any skin, and there seemed to be no ill effects. There didn’t seem to be any effects at all, except–

A spark jumped from the portal boundary to the tip of her finger. It was a considerable jolt–it heated up her finger noticeably.

She’d expected to lose some electrons on the far side; the chemistry was going to be different. It didn’t really matter how–she wasn’t allowing any chemical reactions. But that made her electrons unhappy, unhappy electrons tended to wander, and they hadn’t all made it back out with her finger.

The interesting thing was that a lot of them seemed to have made it back out on their own, after a delay. Or the charge imbalance had pulled out other ones–electrons were interchangeable. She checked the sensor readings on her visor–she still had a positive static charge, but it wasn’t nearly as large as it had been at first.

She slowed back down. Time to see what everyone else thought.

“Radiation–” began Journeyman, then he stopped. "Oh. That’s just charge equalization. You okay?“

"Green,” she replied. "Played a mini-game of lightning tag, but that’s it. My finger seems fine–I’m getting feeling back now.“

She held up her hand to look at it. Nothing seemed different. All she felt was the now familiar pressure of the Skystone protecting her from the vacuum–she’d kept her glove off for the test.

"Three?” Flicker asked over her com. "You have any initial impressions?“

"The radiation from the boundary spiked, then dropped off,” said Three. "The spike was almost entirely electrons. I think Doc is right–the earlier radiation we saw was a result of the far side not quite being a vacuum anymore, because of the probes.“

"Cool.” Flicker turned to smile at Journeyman, who had come out from behind the radiation and blast shield. "We have an existence proof! Matter can can stay intact on the far side, if it’s me.“

"The part of you that isn’t electrons, anyway,” he said.

“Yeah. That could be a problem. If I lose them all, then they all return at once when I come back, that’s a lot of energy. And I can’t entropy dump here, except to the heat sink.”

The heat sink was a big chunk of ice, loosly contained in plastic, attached to the outside of the shelter on the other side of a blast shield. It gave Flicker something to connect to, if she needed to dump excess heat in an emergency. A small enough one, anyway.

“But the charges should start to equalize after a while,” she continued. "Some variant of the electromagnetic force has to be operating on the far side, or I wouldn’t have gotten that zap–it would just be a steady flow. And the strong nuclear force is working fine, or I wouldn’t have gotten the tip of my finger back at all.“

"All right, let’s try some repeats, and see just how much charge you lose, and if the spark and the radiation spike happen every time.”

Ten minutes later, he was back to muttering to himself, and Flicker was getting impatient.

“I don’t understand,” he said. "We’re getting variance, but there’s either some variable other than mass, surface area, acceleration, and time spent on the far side, or a lot of randomness. At least it doesn’t seem too dangerous.“

"Yeah. I want to try to sticking my whole hand through and leaving it there for a good second or two. The whole point of these tests is to see if I can operate on the other side, and we haven’t gotten much closer to finding that out yet.”

She watched his eyes through the faceplate of his suit, and heard him sigh. "Not exactly safe, but none of this is safe.“

"No. But there’s no other way to find out.”

“All right. But if you flash the red alarm, we are out of here. Antarctica, so you can dump, then get somewhere to heal. Whether your hand is all the way back or not. You clear on that?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” He moved back behind the shield. "Ready when you are.“

The first hint Flicker felt that something was wrong was an itching sensation from the high speed nervous system in her hand. Little feedback made it across the portal boundary. She could tell her hand was still there, and that her power was keeping it intact, but that was about it. That had been a bit worrying at first, but as long as she could keep things stable, her hand should be okay.

But this was new. Something was trying to happen, and she was preventing it, but there was resistance–and it was growing. What could be–

No. The correct response to something new and unexpected was to pull her hand back. She started to, carefully.

Then she began to get proper sensation back from the part of her wrist that had been on the far side of the portal. It was hot–and getting hotter. Not the surface either, this was deep inside.

Enough of careful. She stayed clamped down and jerked her hand the rest of the way out, at full power.

And all hell broke loose.

The radiation alarms started screaming and flashing, she started dumping to the heat sink and it wasn’t enough, and what was wrong with the water molecules in her hand? They were still heating up, and–

Oh. Oh no.

She hit the red alarm and did cold calculations in her mind. Journeyman had superhuman reflexes, magically enhanced. A millisecond to port to her, another millisecond to port both of them to Antarctica. Would he be fast enough?

He would be. She’d make sure of it. She pivoted slightly, and pulled her hand in. It was already putting out neutrons and hard gamma. The Skystone was protecting her so far, but it didn’t stop everything, and all she had to shield Journeyman was the rest of her body.

Then there was the heat.

She pulled it inside, away from the surface, so it wouldn’t cook Journeyman in the time they needed. She’d have one last chance to get rid of some before they ported out.

She felt him appearing, close behind her, and she hard dumped to the heat sink, which flashed from ice into superheated steam. She was sloppy–she got some into the blast shield, too. But that wouldn’t matter, they’d be gone before the shockwave hit.

Then he started the second port, his little pocket universe closing in around the two of them, and she had to hold the heat in. Her hand was at forty thousand K and climbing–her power was all that was keeping it solid. And it was getting worse, fast. She moved as much of the heat as she dared into the rest of her body. There wasn’t anywhere else.

She remembered her first trip to the moon, and just how bad things could get. But she needed to keep it away from Journeyman–he was the fragile one.

Five hundred microseconds into the second port and her hand was up to two million K, and it started getting worse faster, again.

Eight hundred microseconds. Ten million K. Journeyman was getting a big dose of hard X-rays–but most of them would go right through, and the real enemy was heat.

Antarctica. Mass. And she could finally move. She entropy dumped to the ice in all directions as she accelerated away from Journeyman with ten billion g’s of relief.

Then she was far enough clear to let the heat surface, vaporizing her costume in a wave of plasma as she started radiative cooling, doing everything she could to quench the burning from a hand filled with nuclear fire.



Next: Chapter 35

