I'm currently working on proofing Sweet Torment and The Lectrice for publication. I'm not sure which of my other plot ideas to take forward. I thought Go Down Red Roses would be a lot more popular than it is, and as for Cinder Lizzy, I just wrote it as a piece of fluff and it has turned out to be more favourited than any of my other stories!
Currently, I have two ideas, one is a time-travel story called Quantum Entanglement. The other is a Medieval version called Blood and Iron. I'll post the stubs of both in the next few weeks and take the one readers are most interested in forward.
Here is the beginning of Quantum Entanglement. As usual, I would love to hear your ideas for the chapter titles.
Chapter 1
"That's it!" Trudy exclaimed as she burst through the door of the laboratory and threw her gym bag onto a chair. "I'm not dating another physicist!"
The only other occupant of the room filled with shiny stainless steel equipment paused briefly with his right hand above the return key of his keyboard and then hit it gracefully, like Liberace.
"OK," replied Michael, pushing his wheelchair back from the desk and twisting it around to face her. "I'm game. Why are you not dating another physicist?"
"Because they're delta functions!" replied Trudy dramatically.
Michael thought about it for a moment before conceding defeat. "I'm sorry, you're going to have to explain that one."
"A Dirac delta function! Fourier transforms?"
Michael still shook his head, failing to grasp her meaning. He had, of course, heard of Fourier series—possibly in a second year engineering subject years ago—as a way of representing any wave function as a series of sinusoids. But as for Dirac delta functions, well, he couldn't recall that anyone had mentioned them at all...
"A Dirac delta function is infinity at one point and zero everywhere else!" exclaimed Trudy, collapsing onto her chair.
Michael smiled in understanding. "I gather your movie date with Brett Fidler didn't work out?"
"Too right! The lights went out 20 minutes into the movie when the substation next to the cinema failed. A few couples around us started making out. Brett invited me round to his share house for coffee instead... and then sang to his Gilbert and Sullivan collection, for two hours. Finally, one of his flatmates came home, and I managed to escape."
"Well, that was very polite of you," said Michael, a little surprised Trudy had been so diplomatic. "Operetta, heh? No kissing?"
"No kissing. What a waste! The best looking guy in the physics department, and he only cares about string theory and Gilbert and Sullivan!"
"Definitely a delta function," agreed Michael. "But you're a little late—lab meeting finished half-an-hour ago."
"I had to go to the gym to prevent myself getting depressed! Trust me, I wouldn't have been able to work efficiently today if I didn't! Did I miss anything?"
"Kind of. They announced the BSD grants early."
"And?" said Trudy, excitedly. The lab had been waiting on funding to come through so they could purchase another superconducting magnet.
"Prof missed out."
"What!" exclaimed Trudy. "You're pulling my leg, right?"
"Nope."
"But he has two Nature papers!"
"Not in the last five years," said Michael. "The government decided to use $200 million of the research budget on the new science education initiative—apparently we don't have enough students studying STEM.* That's one third of the research budget, so only the top 5% of projects were funded, and Prof didn't make the cut."
"My God! How is he going to pay Nima and Christian?" asked Trudy, thinking of the two postdocs whose wages were dependent on BSD funding.
"Their contracts won't be renewed at the end of December. They've got less than two months to find another job, along with all the other postdocs who just failed to get their funding renewed. I guess that's why the government decided to announce the grants early, so that all the unemployed scientists have a little more time to find new jobs before Christmas. Wasn't that kind of them?"
"So they're investing $200 million in training tomorrow's scientists so they can be unemployed?" said Trudy, collapsing against the desk. "How ironic! Now I really am depressed!"
"Looks like it's just you and me kid. Unless..."
"Unless?"
"Unless we collaborate with the Arts department."
"What's so bad about that?"
"They're interested in Temporal Quantum Entanglement."
"Time travel, heh? Well, I suppose that was a no-brainer. I didn't imagine they were going to be interested in pre-fusion reactions. Is it someone in the history department?"
"Literature," replied Michael. "They're studying Jane Austen."
"Who's Jane Austen?"
"Good grief, Trudy!" exclaimed Michael, rolling his eyes; "Only one of the most famous novelists in English literature. What did you study in high school?"
"Emily Bronte and Shakespeare."
"Well, I suppose that's a start. Do you recall the name of the book Emily Bronte wrote?"
"Sure, it was 'Wuthering Heights' and the main characters were Heathcliff and Cathy. I was kind of in love with Heathcliff until the dog incident."
"Ah, yes," replied Michael, "I suppose that hanging lapdogs does not reflect well on one's character. Have you not heard of Fitzwilliam Darcy?"
"No, he sounds like an investment banker."
Michael laughed. "Not too far off. He's the rich guy in Jane Austen's most famous novel 'Pride and Prejudice'. It's been made into a movie several times, most recently with Kiera Knightly."
"OK, I know her. She was in 'Pirates of the Caribbean'."
"Right, I guess that's kind of a period movie too, although when Jane Austen's novels were written, they were contemporary."
"So you're into period movies?" asked Trudy. "I wouldn't have guessed it."
"No, it's my wife who is the big Jane Austen fan. But I get major brownie points for sitting on the sofa with her while she watches the adaptations."
"Cute, but I thought Prof said he didn't want to have anything to do with those time travel experiments. Doesn't he have ethical objections?"
"I'm afraid those went out the window when he missed out on funding. Without that new magnet we won't be doing any novel science, so no chance of another Nature paper and little likelihood of getting funding the next year. It's a downward spiral from there."
"Right."
"He's gone over to the history department to talk to this potential collaborator, but he needs you to do some calculations—to estimate how much energy we need to generate to do this sort of time skip. Here is the 4-vector he's interested in," Michael said, handing over a manilla folder with a yellow Post-it note on the cover.
"Oh, great!" said Trudy, glancing at the row of numbers on the note. "Just a back of the envelope calculation, heh? I haven't got the least idea what's involved!"
"Prof also left you the two best papers from Phys Rev Letters," said Michael. "They're inside the folder."
Trudy opened the folder and quickly scanned the papers. "String theory! I knew there was a good reason I didn't tell Brett Fidler to get stuffed last night. I'm going to have to pick his brain."
"Think you can do it then?" Michael asked.
"Should be able to," Trudy said, flipping over the pages to get to the Methods sections. "I'm just not sure how long it's going to take. I'll need to use quite a lot to CPU time. Lucky Prof got a large quota this quarter."
"Well, you applied for it," commented Michael in bemusement.
"Yes!" agreed Trudy. "But they gave it to Professor David Gellings, not Trudy van der Hoff. The quantum chemists were spitting chips*—someone from the physics department using their supercomputer!"
And with that she was off down the corridor.
Michael finished dealing with his email and then wheeled himself back into the lab where he was designing a new circuit board using the CAD* software.
An hour later, Professor David Gellings walked into the lab.
"Did Trudy turn up?" he asked Michael.
"Yes, she's gone off to discuss your equations with Brett Fidler, prior to starting the calculations."
"Good. Tell her to let me know as soon as she's got an estimate."
Three days later, Trudy still hadn't arrived at her boss's office and he went off in search of her. He found her asleep under her desk in her gym clothes. She woke when he walked through the door.
"Trudy, why are you sleeping under your desk? Have you been evicted?"
"No, Prof," said Trudy, crawling out and standing up, "but I only finished setting up the calculations at 1am, and it's not safe to walk across campus at that time."
"You slept the rest of the night under your desk?" he said, looking at the hard linoleum floor. "I'm surprised security didn't throw you out."
"If I pull my chair in to the desk, they can't see me from the hall, and they generally don't bother to unlock the door."
"You must be aching all over!"
"I sleep on a rug on the bare boards of my flat. My kung fu instructor says it keeps you fit."
"Right...," said Professor Gellings, looking slightly dubious. "Well, how are the calculations going?"
"Well, I've parallelised it, and I had 16 cores last night," Trudy said, waking the screen with a tap of the keyboard. "But, I've been niced* down to 3 cores now—those quantum chemists have started running their jobs. Probably another 48 hours to finish the raw calculations, then I've got to integrate the data. Provided I haven't made an error... 3 days."
"And if you've made an error?"
"Rinse cycle: repeat. Another 3 days, every time I make a correction."
"Sounds like some heavy number crunching. I thought one of the Phys Rev Letters papers from the Los Alamos laboratory contained an empirical equation?"
"That was only relevant to the specific instance they used as an example for their World War II research. There was some lucky approximation that allowed them to simplify the equation for that 4-vector. They were just showing off. I had to do de novo calculations. The energy required is mostly dependent on the geographical locations of the beginning and end points in the space-time continuum relative to the earth's core."
"Are you saying you need to know the orientation of the earth's core 200 years ago?"
"Yes."
"How on earth did you estimate that?"
"I got the data from Geosciences Australia. There's this Greek guy there who was really helpful. We've exchanged a few emails now."
"Oh, OK. So hopefully 3 days?"
"Yes, Prof."
Three days later Trudy knocked on her supervisor's door in the late afternoon. After letting herself in following his summons, she waited patiently while he finished his phone call.
"Good Lord!" he said, after he'd set the receiver in its cradle. "That was the university's ethics advisor. We have to fill out a 44-page form to get approval for this! Hopefully I can get the Arts people to do it. I can't cope with filling out my tax return! How did the calculations go?"
"I think we need three more magnets."
"You're joking!"
"No."
"My God. They're $100k each. Are you sure we need three?"
"I'm running the Los Alamos example using my code as a check. That should finish tomorrow."
David Gellings sighed. "OK, well I guess I'll email Professor Braithwaite and line up another meeting for the end of the week if she wants to go forward. This may upset the applecart. I told her we would probably need a single additional magnet based on the Los Alamos work."
"It gets a lot more expensive the further you go back in time, and it's not linear," said Trudy. "Plus there's a significant locational difference which is only partly offset by the core drift."
"The MIT people seemed to think we would be pretty close to the golden jump point here in Sydney. Where is it exactly situated?"
"For the date you specified—in the middle of the desert, around Broken Hill."
"Right. Well, I guess we are closer than MIT or Los Alamos," sighed Professor Gellings, picking up his coffee cup and trying to recall if it was his fourth or fifth for that day. "Let me know as soon as you can confirm your estimate."
Trudy accompanied her supervisor to the meeting on the next Friday, wearing the only piece of smart casual wear she possessed—a dress she had purchased for her sister's wedding and worn on her only date with Brett Fidler. Professor Gellings had told her to 'dress up'. He was wearing his standard crisp white shirt and grey trousers but had added his Sydney Grammar tie, which he kept in his desk drawer for special occasions. A straw boater would have completed the ensemble of an overgrown schoolboy, but Gellings had sufficient gravitas by way of height to escape the comparison.
The meeting room was in one of the gloriously gothic buildings on the main quadrangle that formed the original part of the university. Trudy looked up at the vaulted ceiling in wonder as Professor Gellings led the way up the stone staircase to the second floor.
"Pretty special, hey?" commented the professor. "The ceiling is modelled on the chapel of King's College, Cambridge."
An extremely well dressed woman wearing pearls was waiting for them at the top of the stairs. She looked like she might be a politician. "It's a fan vault," she added as they reached the landing. "Hello, Trudy," she said, holding out her hand. "It's nice to finally meet you. I'm Professor Braithwaite."
"Hello," said Trudy, returning the handshake, unable to keep from feeling she was woefully underdressed, despite her best efforts.
Professor Braithwaite smiled tightly. "Well, the meeting room's down this way," she announced, clacking off down the hall in a pair of red court shoes with high but sturdy heels.
After following Professor Braithwaite down a wainscotted hall with a polished granite floor, the meeting room turned out to be rather a disappointment—it had beautiful gothic windows but was painted stark white and filled with the same generic steel and plastic furniture that inhabited modern classrooms. Trudy could not help a small, deflated 'oh!' from escaping her lips.
"What's the matter?" asked Professor Gellings. "Have you forgotten something?"
"Oh, no! I've got the USB stick," said Trudy, blushing. "I just expected the room to be like the rest of the building—like Harry Potter—and it's just the same as the Maths Department."
Professor Braithwaite gave a forced laugh. The Maths department was housed in the Carslaw building, generally agreed to be a hideous piece of post-war architecture. "You have our dear departed leader to thank for this—the aesthetically challenged Dean Thomas. He thought we needed to modernise. Thankfully they ripped out the suspended ceiling after he retired, but there weren't enough funds to restore the classroom to its former beauty. We live in hope. I heard that one of the other lecturers was so disgusted by the dean's actions, he asked the builders to save all the original interiors that were ripped out. I believe they're stored in the basement somewhere."
Professor Braithwaite led the way to a portable projector sitting on a table and looked round in perplexity. "Emma was supposed to set up in here. I'm not sure where she has gone."
She toggled the power switch on the projector. Nothing happened. She frowned and checked the the power cord was plugged in, then toggled the power switch again with no better result than before.
"Perhaps a fuse?" Professor Braithwaite mused, clearly expecting the physics professor in the room to be handy with electrics.
Some footsteps in the hallway announced a newcomer of about Trudy's age. She was wearing Prada jeans with military style boots that Trudy immediately envied, but had teemed them with an expensive looking roll-neck top with sheer panels and a string of pearls, much like Professor Braithwaite's. Her makeup was immaculate, including a shade of nude lipstick that matched her top.
"I'm sorry, Judith," said the girl. "There's no power in here. The caretaker says they had to isolate this room and a couple of the other classrooms because they keep tripping the 'RCD', whatever that is."
"Residual Current Device," said Trudy and Professor Gellings in unison.
"You must have a short," added Professor Gellings.
"Typical," said Professor Braithwaite, rolling her eyes. "The electrics in the rest of the building, which were done in the 1920s, work fine, while those in the 1980s renovation fail. I guess we'll have to revert back to my office, Emma. It will be a little crowded, but at least the electricity works."
Emma set down the laptop she was carrying to unplug the projector but when she tried to pick up both objects, Trudy came to her rescue and offered to take the projector.
Professor Braithwaite's office lived up to Trudy's expectations. It had gothic windows and built-in furniture in dark wood to match. But the professor had clearly added her own touches with rows of custom-bound books, tasteful modern art, and a Turkish carpet.
"Oh!" breathed Trudy. "This is more like it!"
"I'm jealous of the Turkish carpet!" said Professor Gellings sotto voce.
The ladies in the room all gave a polite titter at his pleasantry as they arranged the room and set up the projector. At Professor Braithwaite's request, Professor Gellings removed a painting from the wall so they could use it as a projection surface.
"Well, after that little hiccup," announced Professor Braithwaite, "let me start off by formally introducing my PhD student, Emma Crossley-Biggs. Emma graduated in Arts with majors in English Literature and French, and a minor in Semiotics. She did her Honours project with me last year on 'Wicked Men in Austen' and received first class honours and the university medal for her work. She will be doing the field work for this project.
"David, perhaps you could briefly introduce Trudy, before we get Emma to explain the project?" asked Professor Braithwaite.
"Right, fine," said Gellings. "Well... Trudy comes from Tamworth. She studied Physics and Pure Maths and did her Honours project with Fred Morecombe in Condensed Matter Physics—also first class—before deciding to join us in Plasma Physics for her PhD. She spent last year doing numerical calculations for pre-fusion dynamics before she started the preliminary calculations for the proposed temporal quantum entanglement experiment."
There were nods and smiles all round before Professor Braithwaite indicated that Emma should start her PowerPoint presentation.
Emma woke the sleeping laptop and focussed the projector.
"Well, as you know, Jane Austen is a famous English novelist who was an acute observer of life in the upper classes, two hundred years ago. She published several novels of a type we would describe as 'romances' and invented the first person impersonal. Her use of irony, along with her realism and humour earned her critical acclaim.
"Unfortunately her wit may also have robbed us of the rich treasure of her correspondence—an invaluable aid in studying her as an author. During her lifetime, Austen may have written as many as 3,000 letters, but until recently only 161 were thought to have survived. Most were written to her sister Cassandra, who subsequently consigned many to the flames and excised portions of those she kept because she believed their content too forthright.
"In 2018, an English antiques dealer found a trove of old letters at an estate auction, some of which he believed might have been penned by Austen. Although they were initially decried as forgeries when the story was first published in the British newspaper The Telegraph, subsequent investigation has supported their authenticity.
"As you know, Professor Braithwaite did her PhD on Austen at Oxford and is considered to be one of the foremost experts on Austen in the world. She was one of a panel of experts convened to investigate the authenticity of the letters written to 'Fanny'—now believed to be Fanny Bentham, a heiress whom Jane met when Fanny visited her relatives near Steventon. Both ladies were still in their teens at the time. They seemed to correspond regularly for twelve months. All Fanny's letters to Jane were lost, but Jane's letters were found intact in a small box, tied with red ribbon. Fanny Bentham is believed to have died of the influenza in 1796.
"Of particular interest is a single reference to a Mr Darcy and a Mr B—ley—the latter name obliterated—suggesting that, rather than being entirely figments of Jane Austen's imagination, she may have drawn their characters from a chance meeting with these gentlemen, likely in the presence of Fanny Bentham. This has fuelled enormous interest amongst the Jane Austen community— scholars and fans alike. Several credible attempts to identify the pair have been suggested but proof remains elusive.
"In January 2019, after an article on temporal quantum entanglement was published in Scientific American, members of a chapter of JASNA attended a public lecture given by MIT professor Brian Buckstead at a US Biophysical Society meeting. JASNA member Betty Campbell asked Professor Buckstead if temporal quantum entanglement enabled time travel, and whether it could be used to study history. Professor Buckstead said that while 'time travel' had been proved to be possible, the energetic cost was high. Furthermore there were serious ethical issues to be considered. Physicists were in disagreement as to whether temporal quantum entanglement permanently perturbed the space-time continuum.
"He did reveal however that he had just reviewed a paper describing a successful quantum entanglement experiment, which was about to be published in Nature.
"After several years of animal experiments, the US military has succeeded in sending an observer back to determine the fate of five TBM Avenger Torpedo bombers, known as Flight 19, which disappeared on December 5, 1945. As previously suspected, the planes temporarily lost situational awareness and were too low on fuel to make landfall. The observer posed as a member of the crew and was successfully extracted by means of a bidirectional signalling system before the planes plunged into the sea. The location was recorded and wrecks of the planes successfully located in 'real' time ie modern time. The remains of the airmen have subsequently been repatriated and interred with full military honours.
"Subsequent to the meeting, JASNA made further enquiries with Professor Buckstead about the possibility of using the method to study Jane Austen. The mystery of the Bentham letters was immediately chosen as a suitable target for further investigation. After extensive calculations, it was discovered there is a significant locational cost to 4-vector translation. Work by Professor Buckstead's group revealed that the both the modern 'golden jump point' and the 'golden extraction point' for the TBM experiment were located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. A spokesperson for the Los Alamos group confirmed the TBM experiment was specifically chosen from a shortlist of incidents because a US military research ship could be positioned near both these locations—information that had been classified up to that point.
"Further calculations by Professor Buckstead's group indicated an even higher locational cost for the Austen experiment, jumping from the United States to Regency England. He suggested that a lab in Sydney, Australia was far better situated to conduct the experiment, at which point JASNA contacted Professor Braithwaite.
"Since then multiple successful quantum entanglement experiments have been conducted at several key laboratories around the world with the correct equipment.
"Quantum entanglement is proving an invaluable tool for the study of history," Emma finished with a flourish.
"Excellent summary, Emma!" praised Professor Braithwaite. "Now, Trudy, David tells me you have some good news about the feasibility of the project?"
Trudy wasn't sure how the need for three magnets instead of one translated into good news, but she dutifully plugged in her USB stick and ran through her calculations, explaining the influence of the earth's core in the drift of the golden jump point over time to any earlier 4-vector. She then explained how she had calculated the golden jump point for the specified 4-vector in Regency England to be located just outside Broken Hill.
"So that's near the border between New South Wales and Adelaide, isn't it?" asked Emma. "Perhaps the University of Adelaide or ANU would be closer?"
"Well, the facility at ANU is currently in mothballs while they search for a new professor following Tim Blakeley's unexpected passing," explained Professor Gellings. "They've made two appointments so far who haven't made it as far as our shores. Quantum entanglement have made fusion laboratories a very hot area—no pun intended. Apparently Australian professorial wages can't compete with the likes of Stanford and Cornell."
"And what of Adelaide?" asked Professor Braithwaite.
"That's Jim Connor," explained Professor Gellings.
"Oh!" replied Professor Braithwaite. "He of the 'not over my dead body'?"
Professor Gellings nodded, having the grace to look slightly abashed—for that had also been his stance until recently, if more politely expressed.
"Well, sorry for the interruption, Trudy," apologised Professor Braithwaite, attempting to get things moving again.
"I've only got one more slide," said Trudy, advancing the PowerPoint presentation. "Three more magnets are required to generate a sufficient neutrino flux to enable CPT* violation over a cabinet of sufficient size to house a human body in a crouch position."
"Professor Braithwaite tells me you do yoga, Emma," joked Professor Gellings.
Emma looked slightly pale under her make-up. "And are the neutrinos confined to the exterior of the cabinet?" she asked. "They don't go through the traveller?"
"Of course, they go through the traveller," replied Trudy, a little surprised. "Otherwise you wouldn't go anywhere."
"Neutrinos from the sun pass through us every day, Emma," explained Professor Gellings. "They don't interact much with ordinary matter."
"And how is transport effected from the other end?" asked Professor Braithwaite, "—where there is no cabinet?"
"That is done by means of the bidirectional signalling device," explained Professor Gellings. "You are essentially sucked back into the cabinet once we tool up the neutrino flux again on this end."
"The BID allows us to track you while you're in the past," added Trudy. "We pulse the neutrino flux once a minute and automatically readjust the historical 4-vector accordingly. You are generally pulled back after the allotted time, but we can pull you back in an emergency, given about two minutes notice. You just activate the BID on your end; we receive the message within the next polling sequence; and then it takes us just over a minute to tool up the full neutrino flux on the cabinet."
"Two minutes!" gasped Emma. "So you can't save me if I'm about to be shot?"
"The most likely causes of death in 18th Century England were by various diseases or drowning," reminded Professor Braithwaite. "Two minutes will be sufficient for any of those. Just be sure not to get into any carriages with John Thorpe!" she added lightheartedly.
Emma tittered appropriately but Trudy looked bemused. Emma whispered an explanation of the character in Northanger Abbey in Trudy's ear.
"Oh!" said Trudy. "So John Thorpe was the regency equivalent of a petrol head?"
"Exactly!" laughed Professor Braithwaite. "Now, back to the magnets. I received some good news this morning that even you don't know, David. As you were aware, as of three weeks ago, JASNA had raised the money to cover one magnet and the salary of one postdoc plus some incidentals. This morning I got news that our Australian patron has agreed to cover the cost of the two additional magnets. The university is working on the contract as we speak!"
Trudy and Professor Gellings were genuinely surprised. The money raised by Professor Braithwaite in a matter of weeks exceeded Gellings' BSD funding for the past three years.
Emma was still looking a little shell shocked. Trudy suspected Professor Braithwaite hadn't fully explained the nature of the time travel device to her student properly.
"So, there are just a couple of more things I need to finalise with Professor Gellings, if you two girls wouldn't mind packing up," said Professor Braithwaite.
Trudy turned off the lamp on the projector while Emma disconnected her laptop. At a signal from Professor Gellings that she should wait for him outside the room, Trudy followed Emma outside. Trudy had only just left the room when she overheard Professor Braithwaite's remark to Professor Gellings:
"Well, I would think this would be another Nature paper, David..."
Three months later, despite being down two postdocs and plagued by a part-time technical officer who never seemed to be around when he was needed, they were ready to go. The improvised device had been tacked onto the end of the neutrino beam with the four shaping magnets in-between. Most of the work on the hardware had been done by Michael, with Trudy as his offsider—there were some nooks and crannies in the lab where Michael's special wheelchair just couldn't go. Professor Gellings had even rolled up his sleeves on one or two occasions to meet deadlines, despite not having worked in the lab for at least ten years. Aside from teaching, Gellings spent a lot of his time going to conferences to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field. Plus there were the interminable research grants to write.
The device had been tested with several animals, the largest being a Golden Retriever from the rescue shelter. All had been successfully extracted after translation in accordance with the MIT protocols and verified as having entered the correct period via isotopic analysis. The retriever was currently still in isolation as a precaution. They had called her 'Elle'—a compromise between Trudy's suggested name of 'Lucky' and Michael's of 'Laika'.
Detailed historical analysis by Professor Braithwaite had identified an ideal delivery point for Emma on the Bentham Estate, Neighbury Park, near Steventon.
Now, at 4pm, Emma was standing nervously in historically correct clothing for a maid of the era—a caraco and skirt with an apron over the top, hobnail boots and a neat cap. It would be her job to somehow inveigle herself into the manor house so that she could observe its occupants during the critical time period over Christmas-New Year of 1794-5 when it is thought Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley visited for a ball. Emma had been immunised for every communicable disease of the era including plague. She had also flown to MIT to attend the first ethics course on time-travel.
After checking the status of the vacuum line, Trudy quietly sidled up to Emma to provide moral support. The technical officer, Patrick McPhee, had magically materialised at the golden moment. His sole contribution to the past three weeks of hard work had to been to volunteer to pick up various bits of hardware at Bunnings in one of the school vehicles—trips that took an inordinately long time and frequently resulted in the school car returning with sand on the seats. He was now entertaining Professor Braithwaite with a very learned description of the stellarator* while Professor Gellings observed Michael's preparations. Finally Michael declared the beam ready and Trudy helped Emma into the transport cabinet. Emma had assumed the crouching position before in tests, but never in historical clothing. There was a slight hitch when she found her whalebone corset was too tight, and Trudy was obliged to hastily loosen it.
"Coming into apogee in one minute," warned Michael.
If they missed their slot, they would have to wait for a half-hour for Trudy's next calculated 4-vector, or risk translating Emma into an unmapped obstacle.
Emma successfully squeezed herself into the allotted space and crouched there like a runner on the starting blocks. Trudy closed and secured the cabinet, then gave the thumbs up to Michael.
"Thirty seconds and counting..." advised Michael, moving his chair aside so Trudy could monitor the diagnostics on the left screen while he concentrated on the right.
Professor Gellings moved behind them to watch the proceedings on the screens while a tight-lipped Professor Braithwaite maintained a respectful distance from the balefully humming machinery. Patrick stood beside her, giving a running commentary and stroking his beard occasionally for the university photographer, who snapped away for posterity, seemingly oblivious of the largely tense atmosphere.
"Three, two, one...," intoned Michael.
Professor Braithwaite was holding her breath.
"Successful translation," said Michael.
Trudy got up to check the cabinet, hovering near the door for the 'all clear'.
"Ten per cent, five...," intoned Michael. "All clear!"
Trudy opened the door of the cabinet. Emma was gone.
Footnotes
Pulling my leg—you're joshing me
STEM—science, technology, engineering, mathematics
spitting chips—furious. Probably comes from spitting chips of teeth. Ie how you angry you would be after a few punches had been thrown.
CAD—computer-aided design
nice—Unix command for changing the priority of computationally intensive jobs
ANU—Australian National University
CPT—Charge, parity, and time reversal
stellarator—a plasma containment device for producing controlled fusion reactions