The slate guided me back to the lab and as I walked in, the Professor was just waking up. I waited for him to speak - was this Rob or the Professor?
"Alan's alright." were the first words he said. You could hear the explosion of air around us as everyone let go of their unconsciously held breath.
The team took the Professor to the main team room and we started interrogating.
"The good news," he started, "is that they spotted our Alan even faster than we did him." He pointed at me. "Turns out that your Rider technology is way ahead of ours and they spotted the brain wave changes almost immediately."
He quickly explained what had happened. Their Alan awoke to a group of scientists who quickly determined what had happened.
They had questioned Alan rather harshly until they realised that this was a first contact with a truly alien world.
"When I arrived, Alan was doing well and was already working with them to try and figure out how to get back. Not surprisingly, they caught me immediately too. Between us, and the information you gave me to pass on to them, they drew up plans for a transceiver which will be ready and on line in seven hours and twenty-three minutes." the Professor told us.
He gave us some frequency and field alignment information and we began to assemble the required parts for our side of the transmitter.
As I worked alongside Ruth, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were missing something. This device was going to set up a resonance field which would make the transfer easier - in fact,
anyone should be able to Ride with this device... but why did we need a brain in the field? The system only augmented resonance effects in two brains, but why brains?
"Ruth," I said.
She made a questioning sound as she continued wiring the assembly she was working on.
"I asked this before... why a brain?"
"What?" she asked and stopped working for a moment. "What do you mean, why a brain?"
"Well, why does there need to be a brain in the loop?" I asked.
"Why an organic cogent brain?"
She looked thoughtful. "Well, your people are far more the experts on this, but as we understand it, a brain is a colloidal mass with electrical pathways. The transfer really is just a way to make these paths resonate and transfer information. I mean,
technically, you're still back on your home world - only your brain is dumping and processing information about what Alan's experiencing and visa versa."
"Ok," I replied, "then what about other kinds of electrical pathway materials.. how about ceramics?"
"No good," she said. "What would handle the information processing?"
I smiled... this would work. "Close your eyes for a moment..."
She did. I tapped against the delicate shell of her canine ear three times. "How many taps," I asked.
"Well, three of course." She seemed puzzled.
"Did my brain help yours?" I asked.
"Of course no...t" She stopped in her tracks.
"Let me guess - your people never had a Morse Code." I tried to say, although the' Morse code' came out as a scrambled gibberish. "I mean a code system of taps to represent letters."
She thought for a while.. "Yes, I think we did - centuries ago before the network was established... I see your point. A symbol set to communicate across the parallel worlds. But it just won't work - we don't have any references in common."
"Oh? How about me? I'm going to remember most of this." I said.
"Yes, but no as we remember it - you're translating internally using our Alan's data set and your own. It's a mishmash of our world and your world's interpretation of our world."
"There's numbers... you could count in binary from one to ten."
I added.
"Binary... oh yes - an early way to design simple state computers. Ours don't use binary. They're quantum analogue."
"Ok, but binary still works."
"Yes..." she said.
We spec'd out a sphere of ceramic material with a single ring of silver deposited around the circumference. I had to remember a slew of numbers about frequency and alignment as well as the local magnetic field density and what seemed like a million other minutiae. Unlike a radio, tuning this device would be hairy so it was best to get it right the first time.
As the transfer moment approached, we agreed to wait one hour after transfer and then install the transceiver and try to start communications with a simple binary pattern from one to ten,
then the addition table, the multiplication table and then we could start trying to establish communications.
Ruth handed me a slate which has a simple image on it:
"That's my name in my language on it. I know you can't read it,
but it should be simple enough to remember it. I'll send an image of it as a rectangle of two primes... that way you'll know it's us." she said.
I stared at the symbol and burned it into my mind. Next it I saw Ruth and knew I would never forget her. I also knew that I would never see her again and suddenly, that thought was unpleasant. I ushered her into my... into Alan's office.
"Ruth... I..." I started to speak.
She put a finger on my lips and stopped me. "I know," she said quietly.
I sensed a sadness in her and realised that my feelings weren't mine alone.
We stood there for what seemed to be hours, not saying anything.
What was there to say? In less than an hour this body would be inhabited with their Alan who was mated to Liah and would think of Ruth as nothing more than his supervisor.
I would be a mere 81 milliseconds away, but an infinity. We would never see each other again, except in our dreams.
We occupied our final hours with various system checks and last minute messages from their people to ours. We rechecked the transceiver system to make sure I had the specs right - Ruth was drilling me hard o n the numbers. I could tell she didn't want me to forget even one detail.
Finally, the time was up.
I sat in the chair and relaxed as they assembled the field coils around my head. A small jab in my arm and suddenly the room started to blur. I shouted out "RUTH!" and it went dark./pre