Chapter 15

“No. The facility underneath is 12.5 meters wide, 18.5 meters long and 50 meters deep. That can’t change; the shape is as compact as it can be and still function. The top 10 meters is my housing and the cube is me and my cyber half, my input/output interface so to speak The steel superstructure is part of my sensory net. Why do you ask?”

“Convenience and style. I was hoping you could create mooring pits for our labship and Crysta on top of a ‘traditional flying saucer’ shape. It would simplify the geometry of the bubble drive and we’d have the capacity to move about local neighborhoods independently.” Kevin replied, “We could coat you and cover Crysta’s station in the CuFeCo alloy and all move about together either with our Bright Possibility Drive or your 4400C star drive.”

“Shape makes little difference in space travel. It is a question of balance if we use standard chemical propellants, but with the whole structure in one AG/inertial damper field, all the molecules are accelerated at the same rate in the same direction. No vectored stress. I could extend the basement floor past the wall and model the docks there. If I get the raw metals, I can coat myself. Crysta is too pretty to paint so she can do with a webbed dome over her slot and you guys are good as is.” He felt a cyber-smile from the Eridanian. Even silicon based teens need reassurance.

“Claim jumpers and land sharks never RSVP, so we need to get moving!”

“Well spoken, Amy. We need to get a move on. Our visitors, if they are coming, should be here in way too few days. It would be a good idea to be gone by then.” Kevin suggested, “Let the calculations and magic begin!”

To recap, the cute practitioners of magic were:

Name Age Hgt. Eyes Hair Size
0 Kevin Carson 23 5’11” green lt. brown 8.5
1 Marly Trudeau 23 5’01” green red B+
4 René Johansson 22 5’00” blue blonde B
2 Andrea Rasmussen 22 5’02” hazel black A+
3 Patricia Carlisle 21 4’11” blue blonde B
7 Jade Bright 16 5’04” blue blonde C-
6 Amber Bright 16 5’04” blue white C-
5 Ruby Bright 16 5’04” blue red C-
- Dale Tooler 14 4’11” blue red B
- Myra Tooler 15 5’00” blue blonde B+
8 Vivian Yamada 14 4’09” green brown B
- Trixie Ferranti 16 4’10” green raven C-
- Clio Demopolis 13+2 4’11” blue white B
- Circe Demopolis 15+2 5’00” blue white C+
- Rhea Demopolis 14+2 5’00” green white B+
- Thalia Demopolis 12+2 4’10” green white C+
- Petra O’Neal 17 4’11” turq blonde C

The magic did, in fact, begin. It took three days to calculate the mathematical model and a week to build the machine and another two days to run the initial simulations. Finally the day arrived to do the real-time test. Unfortunately, the test coincided with the first indications of an incursion into our solar system. The land grab was on.

“Boss.” Alice cautioned. “I’m getting huge energy spikes near the Oort Cloud. It ain’t looking good. We have uninvited company coming to visit. I think the neighborhood has gone all to hell.”

“Do you AI Girls have any problems passing up the next test phase and going live now?”

“Go ahead. Don’t mind us.” Alix responded. “We are just the culmination of bazillions of years of scientific development. None of this ever made any sense, but you crazies ignored the evidence and made the other impossibilities work, so why shouldn’t this bit of suicidal madness be just fine?”

“Now I understand why it was necessary for Phoebe to fragment from Amy. Just because things are demonstrably false every time doesn’t mean they aren’t true.” Alice giggled. “It’s hard to be binary when there are shades of gray within absolutes.”

“Quantum states are what they are.” Marly giggled, “Or not.”

“We haven’t a lot of choices, sister.” This from Amy. “We have seen Urban Renewal from the Aurorans’ point of view. They did not ask for community input. The ideas of the other races we’ve contacted were worse.”

“Do you suppose we will leave a trace when we leave, assuming the evidence is not an expanding singularity?” Marly asked. “I like the way that sounds: a single point expanding. Very quantumoid.”

“Assuming the transition is instantaneous and the wormhole exists solely as a mathematic construct, it should be invisible. We are here and then we’re not.” Kevin laughed. “Or we erupt in a massive ball of pure energy fed eternally by dark matter and half of the universe ceases to be.”

“In other words, the ravings of irrational beings cannot be quantitatively measured by existing technology.” Patty suggested. “Qualitative opinions don’t count.”

“So, either way, it works undetectably or it doesn’t.” Alice commented. “And, like all rational persons, we are back to binary options.”

“So, now you’re a person? You are getting closer and closer to hood ornament status, missy.”

“Promises, promises.” Alice rejoined. “Seriously though. Should some of the people move through the wormhole to keep Crysta and Amy company when we translate over?”

“Are you suggesting that this careless concatenation of spare and mismatched high energy parts will not work the first time?” René laughed. “Of course it will. We told it to.”

The Demopolis sister/cousins and Petra opted to go keep Crysta and Amy company, just in case ... The Bright Trips wanted to stay with the Lab Rats and the West Coast Girls wanted to be near their space ship.

Everyone sorted herself out quickly. They battened the existing wormhole from both ends.

“If we stick around much longer, we’ll be caught in the stampede.” Kevin used the ‘voice’. “Screw it. Buckle down and let’s take it to the House.”

René and Marly had the math machine calibrated and warmed up. Trixie and the Tooler sisters locked in the astro-coordinates. Andrea and The Bright Trips double-checked the settings. Vivi and the CyberGirls reviewed the punch lists.

The Mad Hamster Möbius Quantum Improbability Wormhole Drive was as ready as could be defined.

“Nothing to do but do it!” Kevin said softly and pressed the final button.

And nothing seemed to happen. No vertigo, no mal de mer, no sense of acceleration, no exploded eyes, no bones turned to mush. Mostly, no rabbit paste. Right-handed people were still right-handed.

Except the stars were different and half of the ‘sky’ was mostly empty.

And there was this giant brownstone attached to a large chunk of dirt and rock floating nearly a thousand lightyears north of the galactic plane. They assigned the ‘north’ descriptor arbitrarily because of the apparent counterclockwise spin of the whole pinwheel. Not that any spin could be measured, but the spiral arms curved that way.