Chapter 9
John and Victor walked briskly side by side in the direction of Helena's quarters. John felt a knot growing in his stomach as they walked into the room. He remembered painfully the night he spent there right after she died and had not returned since. But he had shared with Victor how he had found the room and Victor wanted to look at the notes she had left in the hope to find a solution to their predicament and reopen the wormhole predicted by Arra. John agreed to help Victor in his search. So both friends entered the deserted quarters of Helena Russell.
The room was as he left it. John walked slowly in, pain growing as he looked around, and did not want to touch anything. Eventually, the room and its contents would have to be reused as everything was in such short supplies on Alpha, but not now… not yet. He wanted to keep it untouched for a little while, just the way she had left it. He walked in and turned the lights to their brightest setting, unlike the night he visited. They both stayed silent, as their feelings settled in. Victor barely could contain his emotions, looking at the room left unchanged since her death. He had been very close to Helena and they had shared many years of work together and a strong friendship.
Overwhelmed by emotion, he could only whisper "Of all the people here on Alpha, why her?"
"I don't know, Victor" John replied in a low voice.
Victor, lost in his thoughts, continued sharing his feelings, much to John's surprise. "Back on earth, I was married once. My wife was from eastern Austria, refugee like I was from the Nazi persecution. We were from a village at the border of Austria and Czechoslovakia. We arrived in London as small children with our families and were living in rather poor conditions. Britain had been devastated by the war; there were a lot of wounded, entire sections of London destroyed. Our families had known each other since then. You see, we were exiled, out of our country, culture, language, religion. I ended up marrying my childhood friend. But, we did not have children. My wife died in a car accident. When Helena came over the base a few years ago, she unmistakably looked like her, except much younger." He paused, remembering. "Helena looked like the daughter we never had. She told me about her eastern European ancestry as well. Helena was born in the USA but her family had come from Eastern Prussia, part of what is now Lithuania. She was very attached to her ancestry. Her father was a medical doctor established on the West coast. She followed his footsteps." He sighted. "She was a remarkable woman."
There was a moment of silence as John reflected on Victor's memories. Then both men looked around the room and moved by the desk. John joined Victor in examining the papers left on her desk, all lights turned on. He could not prevent himself from briefly glancing at the bed, where he had slept that night, holding in his arms her pj's. The garment was left wrinkled on the bed. He turned the head back to the desk, which Victor was exploring meticulously and systematically.
"Hum, a mole!" Victor pointed the little stuffed animal on her desk.
"A Mole?" John asked.
"It is a chemist's joke. As you know, mole is the number used in chemistry to measure large numbers of atoms. Helena had a friend in pre-med, who gave it to her when she passed physical chemistry. See, the Avogadro number is embroidered on the belly of the animal" John looked at Victor surprisingly.
"How do you know this?"
"Helena and I used to talk a lot." Victor smiled sadly and continued shuffling her papers and added "It is going to take some time to go through this."
John looked at him, wondering which meaning he gave to that comment.
"We do not have the time", John commented. "But I have seen somewhere a long DNA sequence. Maybe that is what she was referring to. And over there, I am sure I have seen papers with mathematical formulas on them." John handed him a pile of paper, which was left on the side of her desk. "She was reading a book. I am not quite sure about this, but I think it may be important".
John walked over her night table and picked up the book with the bookmark.
"Sophie's World!" Victor exclaimed. "It is indeed quite famous. It was written by a professor of philosophy, who wanted to make philosophy easier for his students. He wrote a textbook in the form of a novel. It is quite a good book. I did not know Helena was interested in philosophy, but I am not surprised. It definitely would be just like her to read something like that."
"It seems Helena was in the middle of a deep reflection about our place in the universe. I imagine that the proximity of our death and our destruction would have motivated her thinking," John commented sadly. Victor nodded in silence. Both men stood there contemplating Helena's room and the objects she had left as if she was going to come back.
After a few minutes of reflection, Victor added, "Certainly an encounter with Arra and what she learned about the universe would have prompted some study of philosophy. I know that, if it was me, I probably would have started wondering about my place in the world".
John smiled and replied, "Victor, you don't need to meet Arra to wonder about your place in the world. You have been reflecting on those ideas since I've known you!"
Victor grinned. "Yeah".
As they were shuffling through Helena's papers, John discovered more personal notes and reflections, she had written about her journey on moonbase Alpha. In fact, she had documented quite precisely all events, ideas, and discussions she had witnessed and participated. It seemed that the handwritten pieces were quite personal. Paper was in short supply on the base and kept generally for special tasks. More often written material was kept electronically and it was surprising to John, that she had written so many notes by hand. But when he started to read, he understood how she would not want such intimate comments to be saved on the computer network. It was hard for John to keep his emotions at bay, while going through her handwritten papers. There was a real sense of disturbing closeness in reading the precise round letters in blue ink she had laid on the paper. He read a note, which looked by its appearance older than the others. From the lunar date, the very discouraged note had been written way before they even encountered the nebula only a few weeks after they broke away from earth orbit.
"I know this is going to sound so pessimistic and maybe I am just discouraged. We have been wandering on this moon for weeks now. After the encounter of Terra Nova, I realized how complex our universe is. The planet, which we found to be suitable for live, turned out deadly. And there could be many years maybe before we travel to another system. The universe is so vast. As for me, I have to come to terms being reunited with Lee, only to be torn away from him. I am numb. I am not really sure of what my feelings are. There is no doubt in my mind that we will all die on this base without ever finding a planet to live on. I know John would disagree with me. He is a fierce optimist. I am, however, more realistic. It could have something to do with practicing medicine. The base is getting old. Our materials are getting used over and over again and we do not have the manufacturing capacities to build replacement parts for most of the components of the electronics, engineering, or even the buildings. Instrumentation failure will happen eventually. The base was not built to last a long time without maintenance. It is clear that our technicians are doing quite an admirable work keeping it all together in such a harsh environment. They are the real heroes of this adventure, in which we were thrown in by accident. How long is it going to be before everything around us is worn out beyond usability? Even in medical, we are in short supplies of medication. The chemistry labs were never equipped to synthesize molecules for drugs. They would have been shipped regularly from earth. We have converted a lot of the equipment for that purpose and are using a lot of the plants for the extraction of pharmacologically active substances. But I just do not know how long we can last that way. No… If we do not find a place to settle, I think we will all perish. This is just a matter of time. What will be left of us? Maybe this moon will wander, carrying the testament of our lives across the universe as a testimony of what humanity once was, after we are long gone. I am writing these lines, some of them quite personal, because I want those who will find these to understand who we were and what we thought, if they ever manage to decipher our language. I want them to know how we lived here, with our pain and our happiness, with our anger and our love, with our laughs and cries. I want them to know what human means. I will share without shyness or concealment in complete openness what my life is and what my thoughts are, even those moments which I am not proud of, or those intimate moments most kept secret. I want to talk about the courage of each of us, keeping sane in such a hopeless environment with our friendship to glue us with one another. It is a truly human experience where our feelings are bonding us in a real tight community. This will constitute a scientific record on life on Alpha, for future generations to understand what our lives had been."
John slowly lowered the paper and touched lightly the lines of ink with the tip of his fingers. He only whispered "Helena" and closed his eyes for just a moment. He took a deep breath and steadied himself. After continuing scanning Helena's papers for information regarding their current predicament and making sure he was not missing some vital element, he filed carefully, almost reverently, the private notes into a folder in order of date of entry. He placed the folder aside, making a vow to read it with the proper attention and dedication when everything would be over, if he was still alive. Her private comments on her life needed to be read with time, respect and love, when he was not preoccupied by the immediate survival of Alpha. In the face of the present and imminent danger, there was no time for grieving or contemplating the life of the woman he had loved and considered his wife. For now, the pressing task was to look for a way to survive and he knew he would not be able to think straight if he let his emotions cloud his mind.
John looked up at Victor. Victor was staring without moving at the bookmark she had used in 'Sophie's World'.
"Victor?" John asked, worried his friend was overwhelmed by sadness as well.
"Oh… I was just thinking." Victor sighted pensively. "Helena used a bookmark whose engraved characters mean just what she was trying to discover. How interesting!"
John looked at Victor strangely and replied:
"Since when do you understand Chinese?"
"It is not Chinese. It looks like it, but it is Japanese Kanji characters, which are derived from Chinese. And I do not know Chinese, or even Japanese. I just happen to know about these particular characters because of their significance. They can be used like visual poetry, you see. This character is the sun, this one the moon. Taken together they mean 'bright light'. Above it you have a character that means big and the character for energy. The combination of it can be taken metaphorically as 'the supreme energy of all things', in other words, 'the big light of all heavenly bodies', such as the moon and the sun coming down on us, insignificant human beings. This is really a sacred character."
"Quite to the point!' John stated.
"People used to believe that the universe had an energy, which trickled down on us and animated our spirits and bodies." Victor continued.
"That is one way to put it. I can think of a lot of science, who could support somewhat what you said, since we are all made of star dust" John commented while observing the bookmark.
"This looks quite ancient. I wonder where she got it from," Victor said.
"I don't know. She never talked about this." John replied and added, "But I really would have liked to hear about that story."
Both men looked at one another with friendship for an instant, thinking about the woman they had lost and with her all of her history.
"We got some work to do" Victor interrupted John's thoughts.
"Yeah…" was the sad but resilient reply.
They returned to the papers. Finally, they found pages of DNA sequence, heavily annotated and also several mathematical formulas on a series of computer printout.
"We need to give the DNA sequences to Bob Mathias, so that he can decipher the annotations of Helena. I am really not versed in molecular biology. He should work with David Kano on this. According to the computer log, Helena had entered a sequence on the computer. We will need to know which one she analyzed and if there are any files left corresponding to the sequences we just found." Victor said.
"She said that the computer recognized the code as mathematical formulas, I bet those are the printouts of them. We need to look at them closely. They look quite familiar." John was staring at the formulas with some kind of recognition. And he handed the papers over to Victor.
Victor looked at the papers only for a minute before exclaiming:
"Well, this is Kip Thorne's formulation of a wormhole! Do you know the little story behind it?"
"Not really, Victor," John answered.
"Ten years before his death, Carl Sagan was writing his novel 'Contact' and he needed a way to have his heroine travel faster than light. But we all know that the speed of light is the cosmic speed limit. Can't go faster than it. So he asked Kip to study the problem. Kip came back with the idea that she would fall into a wormhole."
"We've done that!" John commented with humor.
"So Kip, being who he is, took the problem at heart and got back to Carl much later with an entire mathematical formulation of a wormhole. This was released in a very famous paper in 1988." Victor continued "And he calculated the theorical characteristics that such a wormhole should have in order to allow travel in it. It was unprecedented in physics, because he took the problem backwards by assuming it was possible and calculating which parameters would make it possible. And doing this, he defined the characteristics of a gate, which would allow such travel. He was able to determine that such a wormhole, would they exist would allow not only travel between far regions of the universe but also travel in time." Victor paused. Then he added. "But while mathematically such wormholes are possible, the energies involved are absolutely enormous and nobody was able to imagine they would be for real."
Victor was contemplating the formulas with awe.
"He did not know it at the time, but it turned out to be a major discovery. He would create this wormhole by using spinning black holes, stabilized in their centers by negative mass matter or negative energy to prevent the collapse of the wormhole."
"Negative mass?"
"Yes, matter which exhibits negative gravity or antigravity. I worked on this quite a lot. This theory is at the base for the artificial gravity system we use here on Alpha. It repels instead of attracting. Some people call it exotic matter for lack of better word. Of course for the longest period of time, it was thought impossible to find such matter, but then a lab had been able to create a negative mass effect, the Casimir effect, which would indicate that this exotic matter indeed can exist under certain conditions." Victor kept silent for an instant, thinking, then he added, "We were able to recreate a very small amount of exotic matter and a mini-wormhole in space by building a space particle collider here in space in a low orbit around the moon, much more powerful than the large Hadron collider in Geneva. It took a fantastic amount of energy and it dissipated in a fraction of a millisecond. It was right before breakaway".
"So the technology is possible?"
"Indeed. A civilization much more advanced than ours with a quasi unlimited source of energy –harvesting directly the energy of stars or dark energy for instance- could in theory manipulate exotic matter and manufacture wormholes for travel. That is not inconceivable."
"Victor, do you think we are dealing with these formulas here?"
"I do not think… I know. Those are the formulas for wormholes. They are relatively simple formulas, accessible to any grad student in general relativity. Kip put these formulas on the general relativity exam at Cal Tech. He gave the students the wormhole solution of the equations and asked them to find the properties of the object they described."
John looked up. "Did anyone get it?"
"Nobody!" Victor laughed. "No student had enough imagination to understand that it was a wormhole allowing travel in space and time. Ask Alan… he took the exam." Victor gave him a mischievous smile.
"Remind me sometime."
As if coming on cue, Alan rang the door bell.
"Can I come in?"
"Speaking of the devil!"
Victor took his comlock to open the door. Alan stepped into the threshold of the door and froze suddenly as his look swept the room. He had not been in Helena's quarters since her death, and he noticeably felt uncomfortable looking at her private environment. Emotion was betrayed on his face as he crossed the room to meet John and Victor at Helena's desk.
Then he regained his composure and he cleared his throat. "Have you found anything professor, commander?"
"We might have. Take a look at this."
Victor handed him the papers with the mathematical formulas on it.
"Oh no… Not this again!"
"Kip Thorne's formula?" John asked.
"I will recognize it anywhere." Alan said.
"Victor told me about your Caltech experience." John added with a smile.
"Thank you very much professor!" All of them laughed.
"I can't believe I am seeing this formula again. I spent hours staring at it and trying to figure out what it meant. But to find it here… In Helena's place? I really do not think she could have worked that up by herself." He turned to John and added. "You know. It is really not her field of expertise."
"There is more." Victor handed him another sheet of paper. "What do you make of this?"
"Professor, I am not sure. Those mathematical equations are quite impressive. I do not remember seeing anything quite like this…ever. Carter said puzzled.
"Neither did I" Victor replied.
"But of course I have only a basic training in physics, just mandatory to be a pilot. I am limited in such knowledge" Alan continued.
"I have never seen anything like this either" John said "and I surely have more than a basic training".
"These equations are using functions that we do not know… at least to my knowledge. Matrices are part of this. And it looks over there like something I have seen in the expression of string theory. No wonder Helena crossed referenced this with what is in the memory of the computer data bank." Victor added frowning. "This is most unusual, but I think it might me an expression of the unified theory, a mathematical expression of the universe and its laws."
"Can you find out?"
"We have to go and search the database" Victor reached his comlock. "Mr. Kano, we will need access to the data banks of main computer. I think you can help us."
Several hours later, a command conference was assembled in the little cramped office next to the main mission control room. They missed the large conference room of the surface sections and the senior officers were uncomfortable and stressed in that rather small space. John started talking.
"A few hours ago, we discovered a number of key documents in Dr. Russell's quarters. It seems that she had been working on some of them, which will help us understand what she was doing and how to reproduce it. Among the papers, were several sheets covered in mathematical formulas, printed from the computer and a very long DNA sequence heavily annotated by her hand. Other papers were found, some of which were more of a personal nature and as well as some philosophical reflections. We are especially interested in the mathematical ones, because we think it might be the formulas which led to the formation of a wormhole and allowed Helena to contact Arra. David has put these through the computer data base. David?"
David Kano started to talk. "It did not take very long for the computer to find these, because Helena had done the same search before and the computer had already solved the equations. As professor Bergman suspected, these equations are describing the unified theory, which is a theory of everything, encompassing and explaining the laws of the universe: Einstein's dream, the Holy Grail of physics. The number of possible solutions to these equations is enormous. It represents a daunting number to imagine: for our consciousness, it is close to infinity."
"What do these solutions represents?" Sandra asked.
"Universes…. Billions and billions of them, with different parameters each. It is quite fascinating."
"Universes" Victor murmured, deep in thought.
"Yes. But there is more. The equations seem to integrate part of string theory. So you have the infinitely big meeting the infinitely small in one theory, and together they explain all laws of the universe. That is why it is called the unified theory. Multiple dimensions of space and time are involved, such that these universes really would exist in different dimensions. They really could be all around us, but we would never know." Kano looked fascinated.
John interrupted his reverie.
"The question is: What do we do with this? How does it help us?" He spread his arms. "We are facing the nebula. And we have to be able to reopen the gate Arra was planning to open for us."
"Well, I think these mathematical formulas are the link. They describe a way for us to escape our present location to jump to another part of the universe…" Victor started.
"Or another time" Paul continued.
"Or another universe" John concluded.
"But how? With a ship?" Alan questioned.
Victor shook his head "I don't think so. Helena described a device, which contained, according to her, a miniature black hole. She talked about scanning her own DNA, which brings us to the second part of this and the DNA sequence we found. We already hypothesized that this device might have caused her death"
"We do not have it" Alan commented.
"No we don't, but we have the DNA" Dr. Mathias interjected. "And we know that some of the sequences contain code representing some of these formulas. DNA can be read in a biological way, each triplet of bases coding for an aminoacid, the building blocks of proteins, but only a small percentage of all the total DNA sequence is actually coding for proteins. In fact, most of it is doing just nothing, or actually seems to be doing nothing. If you read this code as a computer program, then you have the answer. That is instead of a binary code, you would have a quaternary code. It seems Helena did just that and, out of sheer luck, decoded the whole thing into mathematical formulas, some of which we still do not understand. But some of the formulas match the unified theory and the formulation for wormholes."
"It looks like she triggered a mechanism that communicated with Arra" John added.
"That is really the part we do not understand. How did Arra know that Helena discovered this? How did this communication get transmitted in the first place?" Victor added.
"Does it really matter how? All we need is to recreate the same phenomenon, get the attention of Arra so that she can help us" Sandra commented.
"I would agree with Sandra. We can dwell on the meaning of all of this, when it is over." John said.
"If we are still alive…" Alan said.
"We will… we have to" was the only answer of John Koenig.
They all looked at each other for a moment in silence.
"How do we do this?" Alan asked.
"We need to recreate the conditions in which Helena triggered contact with Arra." John said.
"The conditions have changed. When Dr. Russell did run these equations on the computer, we were linked to the surface. Transmissions were able to be broadcasted out from the main computer. We have entered the nebula's immediate vicinity. The levels of radiations outside are high and chances are slim we will be able to communicate with anyone. Any electro-magnetic signals are unable to travel in such heavy particle clouds; we are bathed in radiation. No instruments are working outside on the surface. We have lost all communication systems with the surface areas. How many hours until we are completely fried?" Paul said with frustration.
"Paul. We do not know how Helena reached Arra. She certainly did not intentionally plan on doing so. Was it through the computer? Or through some unknown transmission system across space-time? In fact we know nothing about other universes or the way to circumvent normal light speed wave transmission. But we need to run the mathematical equations and see if that opens the wormhole. And we need to do this quickly." Victor answered.
"How?" Sandra was puzzled.
David Kano looked up, quietly. "I think there is a way…"
Everyone turned to look at him.
"When we encountered Piri, Dr. Russell linked my optical fiber network implanted in my cerebral cortex to the computer."
"That's it!" Victor snapped his fingers. "We link you to the computer and we have the computer run through the mathematical equations we have discovered. Your consciousness will be able to direct the flow of information and you might be able to establish a link. The mathematical formulas running through your brain and body and your DNA could trigger it. Maybe this will be enough. But we will have to be in communication range…" The room fell silent at the implication of Victor's statement.
"No. I will not allow it" John plainly said.
"Commander, there is not time. That is the only way." David said.
"Do you realize what you are saying?" John said. "The chances of you not surviving this are enormous"
"I'll go. You will need someone to take you out of there on an Eagle." Paul added.
Sandra screamed a high pitch "No" and ran to Paul. "Paul, no, you will die. No" And she threw herself in his arms, hitting his chest with her fists. Paul caught her and held her tight against him, while she collapsed in sobs. He looked up and met John's eyes with certainty.
"We have to try" Paul said simply.
"You are going to need someone knowledgeable in astrophysics and to monitor the computer input on David's brain."
"Victor! I should be the one to go" John exclaimed.
"Come on, John, opening up a wormhole? I can't miss that! This is my only chance to witness and study such an event. Besides you are younger than me and very much needed in command of this base. This is not the time to sacrifice yourself."
John jumped at his words and thought about them for a moment.
"Victor, David, Paul…. do you realize what you are trying to do? Going out in a radiation cloud, hooking David to a computer spitting out insanely complicated mathematical formula, without any idea of what is going to happen when they hit his cerebral cortex!" John was arguing, as he did not want their decision to be made lightly.
"Commander, you went out through a radiation cloud against all recommendations, when we were about to collide with Arra's planet. You made it." Paul said.
"The radiation levels were a lot lower." John replied.
"John, we have to take this risk. Everyone and the entire base depend on it. If we do not find a solution to our problem, we will be dead in a few days, maybe hours. You have to let us try."
John looked at Victor and saw the determination in his eyes. He knew that there was no argument. He also knew that his men were courageous, bold and that he was just like them. The men had made their choice and as a commander he had to respect that. John turned away and started to pace on the other side of the room. He hated this idea of mission. It was untested, dangerous and with minimal chances of success. Yet it was their only hope, and there was no time. John in the past had taken many risks himself. Still he felt that this time it would be different. They were dealing with the unknown and extraordinary forces. The life of the personnel of moonbase Alpha was at stake. He turned suddenly and said.
"Alright. You get ready and take the maximum number of precautions. I want anti-radiation shields, reinforced shields, space suits. Do not overlook anything"
John dismissed the team and turned around covering his eyes with his hand to prevent others to see the emotion he was feeling. Everyone was eager to get working on the details of the mission. Others in command center accompanied them to work on the technical details. John stayed in his office with Victor.
"Victor, this is just crazy. What are our chances?" John asked, anxious.
"Oh, I do not know much about chances. But I know that we will not survive if we do not attempt to escape the nebula. Helena tried, John. She knew it would be our only way to survive."
"And she died!"
"Yes, she died, and she did not give her life up for us to stop trying"
"What are you saying, Victor?"
"There are worse things than dying, John! I am saying that I know perfectly well, that I might not make it, just like we knew we would not make it in the black sun. Just like you knew you might not make it, when you went out in the radiation cloud by Atheria or when you went out to the Triton probe. We keep on risking our lives for our community, because this is what we do. Helena did it because that is who she was, and I bet that did not come easy. We give our time, effort and life for others and to protect this base, because this is the only home we have." Victor concluded with somberness, knowing that John was feeling horribly worried about them.
John nodded, emotion clouding his eyes, and Victor smiled at him understandingly.
"I cannot wait to see this wormhole" Victor cheered up, gave a slap on John's back and opened the door. "I better go and get our little experiment ready" and he stepped out to go to the lab.
John remained in the room and went to command center to check on the radiation levels. Sandra was back at her station.
"Commander. You cannot let Paul go. Do we all have to die? Why does he have to go?"
"Sandra. That is his decision"
She lowered her face and stayed silent, stricken by anxiety. John came over and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. That was the only thing he could do. He knew their situation was desperate. He did not have the words to help her. He wished deeply he would, but didn't.
The radiation levels were increasing steadily. All sensors directly exposed to space on the surface had been fried and only the subsurface instruments in the catacombs were still working and able to record the data. He knew that the data they were getting were severely underestimated, which was not good. It only meant that the real radiation levels were a lot higher. The team would be exposed to levels of radiations way beyond what they could tolerate; their eagle would be submitted to an incredible high amount of stress thousand times above specifications. John could not foresee how they would survive. But he also could not think of another way to so this. It was impossible to send Kano alone on the surface; he needed to be connected to the computer. The information transfer had to be monitored live by someone present next to him, ready to intervene at the first sign of distress. This could not be done in a space suit on the surface. They needed the shelter an eagle would provide, radiation shields, heavy layered shielding in the walls of the space ship and the link to a computer and a communication system. John ordered technical to set up a series of relay to allow communication with the eagle. The first set would link the underground base to the immediate surface, since all communications had been interrupted with the increasing levels of radiation. Two engineers from technical volunteered to walk into the catacombs and lay a set of radio relays. Very soon, however, they had to get back down, as the radiations were too high, but they were able to set up transmitters close to the surface.
(To be continued... I know it is short. Sorry it took so long. Part IV coming soon)