...
"Good thinking, little buddy."
(Sam & Max)
…
Aldrin Station, October 16th, 7:59 AM, 2180
…
I sat back down on the edge of my couch, focused intently on the datapad in front of me. As I leaned a little too far forwards, I got a pained pulse in my back again, and just at the right time too.
I yawned, stretching my arms out as I tried in vain to get the knot out of my back. Failing that, I picked up my coffee cup, taking a swig of the Eight O'Clock Original I had just made. I actually smiled as I looked at the clock, only now realizing the irony. I looked back to the datapad in front of me, picking up and resuming my reading for the morning.
The three days me and Dan had been here so far were supposed to be simple "acclimation" or "catch up" days, but I was already brewing up grand ideas in my head as I went over my old research documents, most of them theoretical . My eyes wandered away from my datapad and around my room. All in all, I was quite satisfied with how personalized it now was.
Yesterday Dan and I had finally gotten all of our research papers and files back, and I was rather pleased with the condition they were all in. What had surprised me the most was the fact that not only had they preserved our papers, but all our personal items from Area 51 as well. I had spent the better half of yesterday just decorating my quarters with my old stuff, including but not limited to my posters, my Saturn V model, my book collection, and my personal pictures.
I focused once more on each one of the items, starting with the photos. Taking in the memory of each one, I smiled. From left to right was a photo of me and Dan celebrating shortly after graduation high school, my parents and I standing in front of our house, our three Labrador Retrievers, and finally a picture my Dad had taken of me when he took me to a gun range for the first time. They all made my heart swell.
I had a limited variety of posters, to say the least. Most of them were either technical drawings or video game posters, but that was just fine by me. My favorite poster was one that one of my father's buddies from the police department had given me. It was a poster of the German Tiger I, PzKpfw VI Ausf. H from WWII, one of my favorite tanks. If I had to choose a second favorite, it would have to be a promotional, technical cutout of a Glock 17. As far as videogame posters go, I had a big one of Master Chief from Halo 3, one of my favorite games in the series. The runner-ups were the tin "We serve Pepsi Cola at our fountain" sign, attached to the wall with magnets, and the "Designed For Living" poster promoting proper care and storage of American gas masks during WWII.
Unfortunately, my sizable gas mask collection, the one that was supposed to go with that last poster, was gone. Upon looking into it, they were apparently all damaged and destroyed after being improperly stored for an extended number of years, leaving me several thousand dollars (or credits) poorer. It was a shame too, because they likely would have been worth quite a bit of money now, 157 years later.
The Saturn V rocket model was a personal favorite of mine, a gift from my parents on my 20th birthday. It was three-quarters my height, extremely detailed, and even included the launch tower. It filled the dead corner of my living room nicely, giving it that much needed "homely" feeling. The books, including such "classics" as Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park", Andy Weir's "The Martian", Eric Nylund's "Halo: The Fall of Reach" filled the shelf behind my couch, adding a large variety of colors to the grey wall. Any space that was left on the shelf was dominated by any other knick-knacks of mine, including my VERY vintage unopened bottle of Coke from the 1983 Orioles World Championship Season. It was worth about twenty bucks back in 2023, but now… it could be worth thousands for all I know.
I shook my head, turning back to my coffee and datapad. I needed to keep reading up on this element if I was going to make an educated proposal to Dan for this device I had thought up.
That's when I remembered that I actually need my papers on fusion.
I jumped off the couch, running into my bedroom and opening up the binders of papers I had roughly organized in an attempt to find my fusion concepts, but ironically enough I could not seem to locate them.
Sighing in sudden frustration, I opened up my omni-tool, calling Dan. Even though I was about 98% sure that he was still sleeping, I still needed those papers and I needed them soon. About thirty seconds later, I got a response.
"Ugh… what do you need, Sean?" A groggy Dan asked, obviously annoyed that I interrupted his sleep. "You know I don't like to get up until McDonalds stops serving breakfast."
"Oh, and here I though you liked Sausage McMuffins." I replied sarcastically, rolling my eyes at Dan's ridiculous need for 8+ hours of sleep. "But seriously, I called you because I can't find my old concept notes on fusion. I think they might have been mixed up with yours."
"You called me at 8:06 to as…ask for notes on fusion?" Dan said with some disbelief evident in his distorted voice. "What the hell… fine, I'll ta…take a look in about… half an hour, I guess."
"I wouldn't want to jolt you out of your beauty sleep too quickly, your highness." I mocked, knowing that talking to him this time in the morning was about the same as talking to a brick wall.
"Fuck you." He replied quickly, hanging up on me. I had to smile, it wasn't very often I got Dan to casually drop the f-bomb. He likely wouldn't even remember it either, knowing Dan would be in zombie mode for about the next half an hour as he wakes up.
I looked back to the info I had on Element Zero, checking over the after-effects and waste products again. Sure enough, applying a charge to an Eezo drive core produces abundant amounts of static electricity, which, if not discharged into a planetary field, could potentially wreak havoc with a ship. In hindsight, the way they just discarded the static buildup seemed depressingly wasteful in my eyes.
I was sure there was a better way.
After waiting for about forty minutes, Dan finally showed up, clutching a binder under his arm, a coffee mug in the other, and a piece of toast hung out of his mouth haphazardly.
"This m-must be something good if you wanted these notes so badly." He remarked with bitterness still evident in his voice, obviously still angry. He stopped for a moment to look around, nodding in approval at my personalization before turning back to me.
"Are you alright? You lo...look like you barely got any sleep." Dan questioned, suddenly sounding worried.
"Heh, you're on to talk. I'm fine, sit down. I think I might be on to something here." I started, opening up the binders and looking for the notes pertaining to static electricity. "You know how static buildup forms when an Eezo drive core is being used, right?"
"Yeah, it needs to be dis-discharged on the ground or in a planetary field, otherwise the b-buildup will eventually discharge by itself and fry the crew." Dan confirmed, sitting down next to me on the couch as he took another bite out of his toast. "Why?"
"I had an epiphany last night while doing some preliminary research. Remember the Fusor method of inertial electrostatic confinement?" I asked, trying to string him along so I could see his reaction to my idea.
"Yeah, it uses a… an electric field to heat ions to fusion conditi…ooooh." Dan started to say, before his jaw dropped slightly in acknowledgement of what my idea now was.
"Uh huh, that's right. If we were to harness the static charge created by one of these drive cores and channel it into a fusor-type fusion reactor, we can create an energy-efficient feedback loop that fuels the reactions in both the drive core and the reactor." I explained further, savoring the wide-eyed look Dan had plastered on his face. "A form of energy synergy, if you will."
"What… what kind of energy output do you t-think this would have?" Dan asked, now very much interested in my idea. "It would have to be a net po...positive loop in order to be anywhere near cost-efficient."
"Now that I have my notes here, the output would likely be somewhere around…" I paused, looking back from my previous fusion notes to the new ones Dan had just given me. Checking the math, I smiled, realizing that I was indeed reading it correctly.
It was even better than I had predicted, knocking my original estimates out of the ballpark. Hell, I knocked them out of the ballpark all the way over to a whole new ballpark.
"In this configuration, around 2.3 petawatts of electricity per hour, running at full power." I answered, blowing even my own expectations out of the water.
"Jesus Christ, that's more p-powerful than a lightning strike." Dan exclaimed, leaning back on my couch and running his hand through is hair. "Per hour?"
"Per hour, full power." I confirmed once again, a big stupid smile chiseled on my face.
We just sat there in silence for a whole minute, processing the possible applications of such a powerful reactor system. If built and deployed properly, this went beyond all
"I guess we k-know what we're working on when we get that lab in a few days." Dan remarked with an excited look in his eyes.
That was the look I was… well, looking for.
…
Aldrin Station, October 21st, 11:43 AM, 2180
…
I rolled around my neck, letting loose some loud cracking noises as small pockets of gas instantly escaped. Lynda turned around to face me with some minor shock on her face, which quickly dissipated. Dan just smiled.
"Anyways, your new workspace is the Delta Labs, down on Level 15." Lynda redirected her attention, facing the doors as they closed. "Currently, the lab only contains basic equipment, but we'll get anything you need within a reasonable timeframe."
"Sounds pretty good." Dan said with a smirk, one hand in his pocket and the other cradling a binder filled to the brim with papers.
The elevator went silent for the next thirty seconds before Lynda looking back at us, speaking up a second later.
"Well, you two certainly look prepared." She commented, cocking one of her eyebrows. "You already have ideas you're looking to try out?"
"Yep." I answered bluntly, a smile spreading across my face once more.
"What is it?" She asked, almost sounding like a kid prodding for what their birthday or Christmas present was.
"Secret." Dan answered for me, looking off to the side in an attempt to keep a straight face.
Lynda simply turned her head back to the doors with an unamused look on her face, Dan and I shooting each other stupid grins.
We couldn't wait to get the ball rolling on this.
We finally reached Level 15, we began walking towards the "starboard" side of the station, starboard being relative given the way the station was built. After walking past several smaller occupied labs, we reached a slightly newer looking area with a large set of heavy doors labeled D-1.
"To access your lab, you need the standard key used to access your quarters, along with these Level 5 IDs." She explained, handing us each a keycard with our faces and names on them. They were remarkably similar to our old Area 51 IDs, though slightly smaller and a bright crimson color. "You two are now full members of Task Force Cerebellum. Congratulations, gentlemen. As Project Leads, you can now hand pick any other scientists and technicians you want to assist you, along with other privileges that shall be explained in full at a later time."
"Thank you, Major." I said, shaking hands with her once again.
With that, she turned on her heel and left us to our own devices once again.
"Well, the UAC welcomes you to the Delta Labs." I referenced out loud, making Dan chuckle as I swiped my ID and slid my key into the specially made slot. The door opened slowly, revealing nothing but darkness.
"Well… that's foreboding." Dan remarked as we both stepped past the threshold and into the darkness.
The moment the sensors detected movement, the whole room lit up. We were both speechless. The lab was a really nice size, comparable to a high-school gymnasium. It had a small rec area on the upper level near the back, adjustable floor panels and climate control, joists on the ceiling, and to top it all off, it was filled to the brim with equipment. All ours. No sharing, this belonged to me and Dan.
"Dude, I think I'm in heaven." I commented, looking at all of the stuff we had to work with. If this was the basic setup, then I wanted to see the advanced one.
"Heh." He huffed in agreement, walking to the pedestal near the lab control console. "Powell, are you available in this lab?"
"Sure am." He answered, his little avatar popping up and saluting. "What can I help you with?"
"I need to kn-know where the 3D printer is, I need to… start off by making a model." Dan began with an even more noticeable stutter, flipping an OSD between his fingers in anticipation as I stood there, soaking it all in a little longer.
This whole lab... ours. We weren't sharing it with anyone, this was our space. Our space to do whatever we wanted to do.
It was time to make full use of it.
…
Aldrin Station, November 11th, 11:13 AM, 2180
…
I jolted awake as my omni-tool began beeping loudly, meaning I was getting a call. I actually groaned upon seeing the time. I turned over in my bed, throwing my feet over the sides of the mattress. Letting out a loud yawn, then checked the ID, seeing that it was Dan of all people.
For the last month Dan and I had been working on a couple of projects, though most of our attention has been focused on the Nemo-Michaels Reactor, as we had decided to call it, NM for short. The project had progressed beautifully, and we already had a working "Gen I" NM right in the middle of our own lab. It was still just a prototype, but it was already giving us great results and taught us dozens of ways to scale up and make further improvements. The results were so good, in fact, that Lynda, who also happened to be our administrator, had taken copies of our designs and presented them to the Admirals. I had yet to meet them personally, but I did know one of them was Admiral Steven Hackett. He was a smart man from what I've heard, at least he would see the strategic opportunities behind such a reactor system.
What we didn't expect from the reactor project was a unique synthetic plasma as a byproduct, which we, as another nod to Doom 3, had dubbed "EnPro" plasma. It was a bluish color and burned extremely hot when exposed to an oxygen atmosphere. Dan and I had determined it could be used as fuel in variable-impulse plasma engines, further reducing the need for Helium-3, and possibly in RCS systems as well. That had piqued the interest of Dr. Vsevolod, who began work with a few "samples" of our plasma. Personally, I saw the potential for a new kind of weapon with this plasma. I remembered my teenage years when I had played through Doom 3, the Series 3 Plasma Gun in that game being one of my favorite weapons. I had preliminary ideas, but I had been too busy with the reactor deployment itself to really focus on it.
Other than that, there wasn't much else too groundbreaking to mention. We've helped a few of the other project leads and personnel on the station, such as Dr. Windham, but other than that… not much. Dr. Ford still seemed to detest us for whatever reason, but so far we haven't had the need to interact with her on any significant level.
"Yeah Dan?" I asked as soon as I answered the call.
"Did you hear the announcement?" He asked in an unusually concise tone.
"No, I've been sleeping in since working that overtime last night. What happened?" I replied, rubbing the jelly and crusts out of my eyes.
"We've been given approval t-to start making the Gen II!" He explained, excitement creeping into his voice. "The Admirals loved it! When the Major pres… presented it to them, all three of them "went all wide eyed" a…and asked how soon they could get their hands on one ou-out of the prototype stage. They're going to have it installed on a test… test ship along with something Dr. Windham has been cooking up."
"That's great news!" I exclaimed, now fully awake. "We finished ironing out the void coefficient problem, right?"
"Yep, and I incre...increased synergy 6% by adding titanium buffers instead of steel ones." He answered, pride practically oozing through his voice. "By all regards, it's ready to go."
"Awesome, I'll get to the lab in a few minutes." I finished, closing the call and hopping out of bed.
I threw on my jeans from yesterday, a Firefly t-shirt, my sneakers, and my trusty lab coat. Just as I grabbed an energy bar and ran out the door, a well-manicured hand grabbed me by the shirt and thrust me against the wall. It was Dr. Ford.
"Who do you think you are?" She asked with hatred in her eyes, holding me there as several techs down the hallway quickly walked away, out of sight. "You think you and that yes-man buddy of yours can just waltz in here and take all the attention for yourselves?"
"What the hell is your problem!?" I yelled, not appreciating the violation of my personal space as I shoved her away. All my internal alarms went to red alert as I assumed a casual fighting stance.
"All of us have been working here for years, then you and your friend show up out of nowhere and get your own lab, your own funding, and now your own contract in less than a month!?" She shouted at me, looking none too pleased. "Who the hell are you two? What makes you so special compared to the rest of us?"
I was too angry at the moment to think about what she was saying, so instead I went off on a tangent.
"First off, we never asked for any of our "privileges", they were simply given to us by the Lynda! Second, we offered ALL the project leads the opportunity to work with us in our lab on the NM Project, and you were the only one who refused to reply back!" I countered, feeling unfairly targeted here as she continued to glare daggers into me. "If you wanted to have a hand in the NM contract, you should have accepted our offer!"
She didn't say anything to "defend" herself, all she did was look off to the side as she crossed her arms. She was actually pouting.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do." I finished, straightening my lab coat and picking my energy bar off the floor. "Fucking hell…"
I barged into the express elevator, hitting the "button" for level 15 so hard that I nearly broke the emitter. Now I was thoroughly pissed off. I pressed my back against the wall of the elevator, staring up at the ceiling in a vain attempt to focus on something else. Of course, it didn't work.
I barged into Delta, Dan, Dr. Windham and a couple of technicians turning to me in surprise. I passed all of them, instead going up to the break area and throwing myself into an armchair. I rubbed my temples, a headache beginning to form.
"Um… should I ask?" Dan asked, him and Dr. Windham walking up to see what was wrong.
I just shot him an annoyed glare, covering up my eyes with one hand to block out light.
"Let me guess… Ford?" Windham asked, looking down at me as he rubbed his white beard.
"Your observational skills are impeccable." I remarked, trying not to get too prissy.
"I don't understand." Dan remarked, a look of confusion plastered on his face. "What's wrong?"
"Mara is angry that you two have made so much progress after being here for such little time." He explained, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "She thinks you two are trying to "steal" all the contracts."
"How could we… we be stealing them?" Dan asked, trying to make sense of the situation. "The Task Force shar… shares all credit for its inventions."
"You haven't been here long enough to "know" Dr. Ford." He explained further, taking a seat. "She joined Cerebellum in order to "get noticed" or "make her mark". She sees you two as threats to her career."
"Oh, so that just gives her a free pass to be a bitch towards us?" I said bitterly, throwing my energy bar against the floor in anger.
Windham just shook his head in disappointment as Dan leaned against the wall.
"No matter, she's the one with the problem, not us." I remarked, getting back up and banishing Ford from my mind. "We have two days before vacation, we need to make sure the techs have everything they need to build the commercial NM reactor."
"Dr. Michaels, before you do that I have something else to share with you." Windham said, as I turned to face him.
"Yeah, Dan told me something of yours was going into the test ship too." I said, recomposing myself as I smoothed out my lab coat. "What is it?"
He smiled, looking back at Dan who did the same.
"With what you've given us here, I can finally say I've done it." He said with a shine in his eye. "After sixty-three years, we now have an actual alternative to Mass Relays."
…
After sitting here for an hour listening to Dr. Windham explain his device, I was thoroughly amazed.
He had created what he called a "Gravity Drive", much to my initial horror. Luckily, it was NOT the Lovecraftian, puzzle-sphere drive core from the Event Horizon movie, but a drive core that manipulated "spatial" gravity to make ships "fall" towards a specific destination. It was extremely interesting, being similar to the Tantalus drive core, but instead being tailor-built to exceed conventional FTL standards current ships were able to reach without a Mass Relay.
It was shaped a lot like a tape dispenser, which I found awfully funny. It had its own centrifuge that generated a localized field of gravity around a ship. When the ship wanted to make a jump, it throws all the gravity in the field towards the front of the ship, instantly propelling the ship forwards at speeds comparable to that of a mass relay. The gravity keeps pulling the ship until it is redirected to the rear of the field, stopping the ship in its tracks. During all of this, the crew is protected from inertia and time dilation by the standard mass effect fields produced by an Eezo drive core.
Saying that this was ground breaking was too easy. No, this was earth-shattering.
Windham has been working on this since 2127, before humanity had discovered any Prothean artifacts or Mass Relays. He made it a point for me to know we had used to call mass relays "phase gates" for whatever reason. Though his device had been effectively finished for the last few years, there was no practical way to test the gravity drive due to the gratuitous amounts of energy it consumed. When he had heard about our Nemo-Michaels reactor, he jumped aboard our project.
And I couldn't even blame him. I wasn't even annoyed that Dan had brought him on without my input.
"This is my life's work." He said with a big smile, holding out his hands to the design posted on the board. "And it truly is beautiful."
"These two are meant t-to be together, Sean." Dan added, showing me another schematic. "He and I have been working on… on integration for… for the last two days."
I examined the design, seeing it was a linkage between our reactor and Windham's gravity drive. Our reactor was tucked firmly behind the core, and the estimated power balance between the two was perfect.
"This is incredible." I congratulated, standing up and shaking Jack and Dan's hands. "I need to share some champagne or wine with you glorious bastards when we go to Earth."
"I know just the place." He remarked with a smile, handing me a card from his pocket.
…
Los Angeles, November 13th, 2:13 PM, 2180
…
Dan, Windham and I opened our bottle together inside Siverlake Wine, the best wine house in all of Los Angeles. We had bought an extremely expensive bottle of 1938 Chateau Latour, deciding the cost didn't matter at this point. We were here to celebrate, and by god we were going to do it right.
I had never been in Los Angeles before, even though I had been pretty close to it before at Area 51. The problems that plagued the city and surrounding areas have been long solved for the last hundred years or so, the canals now constantly flowing with water and pollution cleansed from the air. There were certainly many more buildings than before, but throw in the flying cars and the occasional alien and it was much, much different that it was back around 2023.
Back then, the state of California and surrounding states had been going through what was now known as the "30 Year Drought." Many parts of the state had simply vanished or fallen into disarray without steady access to water, the Colorado River and Lake Mead having dried up a few years after we had vanished. It threw a lot of the West Coast into disarray, and much was destroyed. Since 2054 though, the West Coast had a resurgence with the creation of the Pacific Hydro Municipality, a massive company that finally made use of the large ocean right next to them.
They moved in with massive modern water desalination plants and effectively saved the California from becoming a desert in the span of a year. Since then, Los Angeles had become the home to a massive spaceport, and I meant massive. It was up there with London, New York, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Vancouver.
We had been ferried here along with everyone else who had signed up for vacation this week. From here we were allowed to go anywhere we wanted on the planet as long as it was approved by the Director. If we went anywhere we weren't supposed to go or transmitted any non-civilian data, a dozen Alliance black operatives would descend on us before we knew it. Luckily, Maryland was on the approved list, and we would be heading there tomorrow. Besides, we had already seen what one of the black ops teams are capable of, and Dan and I surely didn't want another repeat of that.
All of us were dressed in casual clothes, even Windham, who was wearing a polo shirt and a pair of khakis. We may have been strictly prohibited from talking about our work while on vacation, but that didn't mean we couldn't celebrate our breakthrough.
"To the three of us, the brightest minds of our generations." Windham said, holding his glass up for a toast. "And to the dawn of a new generation for both spaceflight and energy!"
"Amen." I agreed with a smile, as we all clinked glasses together and took a sip of the vintage wine. It had a great taste to it, and I savored it as a waiter brought us our bread and cheese.
Tonight, we would savior not only this wine, but our breakthroughs. Tomorrow we would take a shuttle to Maryland, and visit the ghosts of our former lives.
It will not be a happy day, but it was necessary.
…
A/N: Sorry that it's been a while, I've been busy wrapping up my finals as of late. With any luck, I can hopefully put out a chapter every week or two now that I'll have some free time on my hands.
So the gang has befriended Windham and have already started leaving their mark on the future they have ended up in. Whether or not this test ship of theirs will work on not has yet to be decided, but we can only hope for the best for our protagonists.
I'd love to read any reviews, I'm always up for suggestions or constructive criticism. Stay tuned.