September 17, 1999

I was part of a delegation to visit the main sliding facility in Syosett, New York on Quinn's new world.

Sliding with me were Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Commerce Bill Daley, and other officials from Congress and the Oversight Commission and the executive branch. Brigadier General Angus Rickman escorted us.

We all arrived in this large room. Mr. Almquist and Major Maggie Beckett greeted us.

"Welcome to Syosset' said Almquist.

We all looked around. There was a sliding generator and associated equipment, and a desk with desktop computers that was used to control the sliding equipment. There were some guards.

"This is our sliding generator," said Almquist. "We can send you back home, and we also send explorers to other worlds. Shall I take you on a tour?"

And he did. We went outside. I could see trees in the distance, several buildings which looked like they were constructed within a few days, and there was a fence marking off a construction site.

"We're still developing the site further," said Almquist.

We went into this large building with all sorts of lab equipment. Dr. Diana Davis is there.

"This is our physics lab," he said. "We measure basic physics. I recently measured the gravitational constant. You can read the report, but if there is a difference between here and our home dimension, it is very, very small, too small to measure with modern instruments."

We then entered another buildings, and there was a lab with technicians will all sorts of electronic equipment.

"We test technologies acquired from other worlds," said Dr. Steven Jensen. "We have to put together adapters. Plugging it in to an outlet back home straight from the box will blow a fuse or two."

We continued the tour. We saw more mundane buildings like a supply warehouse and a workshop amd the study room where anthropologists read material acquired from other versions of Earth and the living quarters where the researchers and guards and support staff sleep while here.

We also saw the rec room where they have their entertainment. It had various things including a shelf with books, a pool table, a ping pong table, and shuffleboards table, and some arcade cabinets and the cafeteria and kitchen where they eat. .

I saw Dr. Conrad Bennish looking at a television playing a home video game console clearly from our world- a PlayStation, I recall.

"Just taking a break," said Dr. Bennish. "I'm playing this game, Chrono Cross. It's really interesting. It's a game where you travel between two dimensions. I wonder if it's inspired by what we've been doing for three years."

"Must be an interesting game," I said.

We continued out tour of the facility, which sprawled maybe ten acres. We even witnessed a team of explorers returning from an expedition. They wore normal clothes, as they had been exploring a populated area of another Earth.

It was time to go. We slid back to Yerba Buena.

I spent the rest of the day grading assignments at home.