Chapter 2: Robot Exploration

Now that Jason had found a way to make a unit which would return from wherever it was going he began construction of a new and larger unit. This new unit would provide enough space for a video camera, a small control computer, and a larger battery to handle the increased power consumption from the added components. Once the new unit was completed he was ready for a more detailed exploration of his new discovery.

In addition to the video camera, Jason had also added a circuit to monitor the current and voltage of the power being applied to the circuit during the time the unit was activated. The readings from this circuit would be captured and stored by the computer as the unit was going wherever it went when it disappeared. This would allow him to track the power consumption of the unit during the time it was operating and perhaps learn more of how the circuit behaved during the time the unit was away.

For the first test he programmed the unit to repeat the same 5 minute trip of his previous successful round trips. This time he would have a video camera and other instruments operating during the time the unit was away. Hopefully this would give him more information about wherever the unit was going when it disappeared.

With everything ready Jason activated the unit. Just like in previous occasions the unit immediately disappeared from its place on the table and Jason settled back in his chair to await its return. He was very eager to see what the camera and other instruments inside the unit would record while the unit was gone. He didn't really know if the unit had somehow transported itself away some physical distance, into another dimension, or even forward or backward in time. He hoped the data from the instruments would give him a clue to where the unit was going. Finally after another 10 minute wait the unit faithfully reappeared on the table once again.

Eagerly he downloaded the data from the unit's internal memory to his laptop. First he started the video playback but was immediately puzzled to find it to be an uninteresting view of the wall at which the camera happened to be pointing. This he found puzzling since he had verified the unit didn't just become invisible but was actually not present on the table during the time it was away. He had tested this by the simple expedient of passing a stick through the space where the unit had been and the stick had encountered nothing blocking its path. Yet the video somehow still showed the wall of his shop during the entire time the unit was away.

Puzzled Jason watched the video again, this time in slow motion. This time he noticed a regular flicker to the video, as if somehow occasionally at regular intervals frames of the video were dropping out. In addition, by watching the video he noticed that about a quarter way into the video which would be half-way into the units trip a slightly smudged area suddenly appeared in the picture on the wall, and then disappeared again when three fourths of the way through the video. Knowing now there were indeed changes to be seen in the video Jason reexamined the video one frame at a time.

Doing this he discovered at regular intervals through the entire length of the video, occasionally one and sometimes two adjacent frames of video did not show the wall but instead were totally dark. Somehow during the dark periods the camera was being obstructed or perhaps there was no light during those frames. Jason would later learn the dark frames were ones which happened to have been taken during the transition time between what he later came to call nodes. During the transition period there was no light available from outside the unit at all, thus the dark frames.

After spending a couple of hours carefully checking the video frame by frame, Jason moved to the other data recorded by the unit during its trip. He immediately noticed the current drawn by the unit increased to a peak at regular intervals, intervals which coincided with the dark frames in the video. The combination of the video and the current drain pattern seemed to indicate some sort of stepped progress of some kind, yet there seemed to be little change between one step and another. After some further robotic explorations he came to understand each of the current surges corresponded with a transition between probability nodes. Knowing this he was able to devise a method to measure the node transitions as they occurred, using the current fluctuations to the coil drivers.