1. Ascend
Thursday, 9:30AM, Daily Grind Coffee Shop on 4th street. The TV blared in the corner gently.
"As you can understand, the public has certain doubts about the project—"
"Completely unfounded. They said the same thing when the LHC started up, after all, nonsense about black holes and antimatter and destabilizing the fabric of spacetime. I can assure you that the probability of such things happening is even smaller than the intelligence of people who make such outlandish claims (to put it bluntly). The Outer Orbit Cyclotron was in operation for years, perfectly safely."
"Speaking of, can you talk more about the facility?"
"Certainly. It's a particle accelerator, made to crash proton beams together at high energies. They're focused by high-energy magnetic fields, generated by evenly-spaced modules; it would be inefficient to orbit a giant metal tube around earth, not to mention the debris problems. There are thirty-six periodic satellites—"
"...Thank you, but that isn't what you're using it for, as I've heard?"
A soft laugh. "Well it is, technically speaking, but we're using... more exotic material than ordinary protons. The goal is to simulate the early universe, of course, inside a pocket of warped space. That sounds far more glamorous than it actually is, of course—we're simply verifying long-held theoretical principles."
"Sounds quite ambitious, either way."
"Not as ambitious as it could've been. We're simply retrofitting old equipment for our uses; the modifications are... minor to moderate. And the station has to be updated, of course, to accommodate different staffing needs. We can send more than just trained astronauts up now—we have experts in the field ready to go."
"Including yourself."
"Myself, and several of my colleagues, and a few others. It's an international project, as you know."
"The construction of the Skyhook cert–"
Someone changed the channel to sports. The West Side was in the lead, 14-13. It was a tight game.
A messy-haired woman in a Gundam Unicorn T-Shirt (vintage reprint) hunched over a coffee table, nursing a drink too sweet to really be considered coffee. She eyed the TV with a look equal parts amusement and incredulity, first because of the newscast, and then because of the betting match that had sprung up between a cadre of undergrad students beginning to crowd around it.
Careful and confident footsteps sounded on the pavement, and she turned.
"The table."
A quirked eyebrow. She grinned conspiratorially.
"Only one chair...? Oh, forget it."
Metal screeched across concrete, and the seat was occupied–care was taken to smooth out the expensive pleated pants, and adjust the cuffs into optimal position. He was exactly as she remembered–very nearly.
"I thought you hated distractions," she grinned, eyes flicking toward the TV.
The man across from her grimaced, huffing a small sigh. "Simply put, I'm young and... appealing. They made me the Face of the operation; against my will, mind."
"Hah! I'm surprised you managed to hold your tongue as much as you did. I remember what you said to that biology major in second year. I thought people running out of rooms crying only happened in TV Dramas."
"I'm a theoretical physicist, not a pity party."
"Experimental physicist now," she pointed out, sipping her drink.
"Ah, so the engineer is so pleased I'm now ever so closer to her level."
"I got the same degree as you, back in the day—plus one."
"Excuse me for focusing on my studies."
There was a short silence as they eyed each other, unyielding.
The neater of the two let out a sigh.
"Listen," he growled, I brought you here to discuss this offer, not argue over trivialities."
"Speaking of—what offer, exactly? I received exactly one email, stating you wanted to meet for coffee after not even a peep for ten years—"
He reached into a spotless leather briefcase, and slapped an overflowing manila folder on the table.
"This offer."
She took a long pause, eyeing the mass of paper.
"Klaus. You know for a fact I am not going to read any of this."
"I'm well aware of that. It's all in your inbox; for some godforsaken reason we're required by law to provide paper copies..."
"You're telling me we've put a giant particle accelerator in mid-earth orbit, and the government is still doing things on paper." She threw up her hands. "Bureaucracy. This is why I stuck to the private sector."
Leaning forward, Klaus snapped the other into his steely blue gaze.
"I'll be frank, Sophia, we have a problem."
"A personal problem?"
"An operational problem."
Sophia sat back, licking her lips. "So not everything's as fine-and-dandy as you say on the news, then."
"It's proceeding as planned. But..."
"But?"
Klaus gritted his teeth. "The field strength. It's just not high enough. And there's certain equipment that needs... heavy adjustment. Modification."
"So your team is vying for someone that worked on the Big Ring back in the day, and you had a personal connection. Of course."
"My standards are high, Sophia, your aptitude for problem-solving and your past project record more than qualifies you."
"Where'd my office be, then?"
Simultaneously, the two turned their gazes skyward. Sophia crossed her arms.
"What about pay?"
"It might be... lower than what you're used to..."
She slapped the table loudly, startling a few tired businesswomen.
"HAH! You actually think I care about pay?" She leaned forward, poking her finger into Klaus's shoulder. "Listen here, Old Labmate, you're offering me the chance to go into space, at the government's expense. I'd offer my left kidney and my firstborn—hell, you can take my soul if you like. Tell me where to sign." She was rubbing her hands together rapidly, as if trying to warm them. It was 75 degrees outside.
"It's all handled electronically—"
"How soon?"
"Once you officially accept, two months at minimum. Fortunately, there's no security clearance involved."
She hummed. "So that's two months to cancel my current bullshit project, pack, gloat, and marathon Macross Frontier again. I think I can manage."
"You haven't changed."
"Neither have you."
Author's Notes
Since I made a lot of decisions here, I'll do my best to explain some in the ANs, along with the more obtuse scientific stuff I'll be sticking into this fic (what can I do. I'm a big giant nerd who loves hard scifi). Consider this an appendix for your reading enjoyment.
LHC—You've probably heard of this one; It's the Large Hadron Collider, run by CERN, on the border between Switzerland and France. Particle accelerators work by accelerating a stream of protons with electric fields, and focusing them with magnetic fields. As Klaus says, these streams (usually called "proton beams") are then crashed together at very high speeds and energies—significant fractions of the speed of light. This creates conditions that generate new particles that can be detected and analyzed.
Idk about you guys, but I saw the circular ring around the earth with the beam moving through it in the end cutscene and immediately thought "wouldn't it be cool if that was some kind of giant collider?"
Warping Spacetime—This will be mentioned a few times, so I'll bring it up now. General Relativity states that any object with mass—you, me, the sun, a nintendo gamecube—warps spacetime around it. The heavier/more massive it is, the more it warps spacetime. This is how gravity operates. In this setting they've figured out how to warp spacetime differently—more on that later.
Mid-Earth Orbit—satellite orbits between 2,000 and 35, 786km (geostationary orbit) above the earth's surface. The space station in the "end of the world" cutscene orbits at a ballpark altitude of 4500km, placing it on the lower end of the spectrum. In the present day, we don't actually have much up around that area, which is nice and convenient for sticking a new thing there.
Skyhook—humor me and take a guess.
Macross Frontier—It's a giant robot anime in space. Just google it if you're really curious.
Sophia
I sat around for a while deciding what to use for Meyneth's original name—a lot of people just use "Meyneth", which I also considered doing. "Sophia" is a name I've seen used before, and I decided to go with it for three reasons:
1. In gnosticism, there are three aspects of God—the Monad, the Demiurge, and the Sophia. I won't get into it too much but in Xenoblade, Alvis represents the Monad (the One, from which all things come), and Zanza the Demiurge (the one who created the material world, often depicted as the origin of sin and evil, or a "Jealous God"). The Sophia is the origin of the Soul, and is considered a feminine entity.
2. There are three characters in Last Exile called Claus, Alvis, and Sophia.
3. In Xenogears (spoilers ahead) the female lead was once called Sophia, and was a religious leader.