Chapter 25

Cider Junction WV time: Friday 5:47:00 PM May 15, 2015 (local time EDT)

Cider Junction WV time: Friday 4:47:00 PM May 15, 2015 (EST Aina baseline)

Aina time: 1:03:48 AM day 254 of 1413 (third day of spring Makua)

"Time mark. Two minutes to go," Kara said calmly.

"A bit difficult to get excited about this," mused Kikapua, as he looked around at his sleepy councilors at the transfer station. "Nalani, what time is sunrise, and what time will it be when the tunnel open for real?"

Nalani yawned. "Sunrise is about 4:10 I think, and if you mean next year, the tunnel will open around 11 AM local time. And I agree, much more pleasant. It'll be the middle of winter on Earth though, February 24th I think. Assuming our patrons have packed lots of presents for us again, it'll be nicer if the tunnel opens now, and the packages aren't so cold..." She yawned again.

The remaining moments passed in silence. "Time mark," said Kara. "We are at zero hour."

The speakerphone reply to the top of Blue Spirit came to life. "Councilors! This is the first-contact team! The Path has opened!"

"What?!" said Kikapua. "Please repeat that!"

"Yes! The Path has opened! I repeat, the Path has opened!"

Everyone in the council room was shocked into alertness. An appeal was sent to the village for additional porters, and the first-contact team was ordered to proceed down the spiral.

In less than ten minutes, a time shorter than anybody was anticipating, the speakerphone came to life again. Kara's heart jumped as she heard the sweet voice of her daughter singing a greeting.

"All nine of us are coming through, including Tom and Ellen," said Mayoni. "We were just as surprised as you probably were, seeing the tunnel open. It's fortunate we had the discipline to be ready. We'll start hiking down the mountain now. The first-contact team has lights for us, expect us within the hour. The tunnel is again packed with equipment. Please have the portage teams start as soon as they can."

It was shortly after 2 AM before the Earth visitors were gathered around the large table with the council. Tom, Ellen, Lois, Kalea, Hiapo, Tal, Kahoku, and Mayoni were all sitting, and Kiana was kneeling on the floor by Mayoni's side. Mayoni spoke first. "My family has asked me to be the first speaker. I want to start with a plea to the council." Mayoni then began an ancient song not sung in over a thousand years, the pleading song of a mistress asking that her slave be given freedom and tribal membership. Her love for her friend and slave was obvious to everybody, and the council offered unanimous advice to Kikapua for admittance. Kikapua made an official ruling, and a chair was brought for Kiana to sit on. Several minutes went by as everyone congratulated Kiana on her return.

Kikapua re-called the meeting to order, and Mayoni began to speak again. "Let me bring you up to date on Earth's status. The plague still rules supreme, and there is as yet no known path to a cure. Through a concerted worldwide effort to end the insane wars, annual global deaths rates in 2013 and 2014 dropped to just under twenty per thousand, and the population at the start of 2015 was estimated to be 6.06 billion."

Mayoni took a deep breath before continuing. "I doubt if 2015 will be as good. Five days ago, I boarded a plane in Honolulu, intending to fly non-stop to Newark, New Jersey. As my plane was approaching the west coast of the U.S., two nuclear explosions occurred within seconds of each other..." The room was silent as Mayoni took a moment to collect herself. "One explosion occurred over the mid-Atlantic, at 38,000 feet. The plane had an unexpected five-hour delay at Heathrow airport. It was scheduled to be in New York City when the explosion occurred."

"My God..." whispered Mark.

"The second explosion occurred in Tel Aviv. Blast yield was estimated to be well in excess of 100 kilotons of TNT. The blast occurred in the port area, and was assumed to be delivered by boat, perhaps by a suicide team or a crew unaware of the danger. Over a million fatalities so far, plus about twice as many severely injured, mostly by radiation. The main fallout pattern drifted directly over Jerusalem..."

"Israel still hasn't retaliated, but the international situation is very tense. The U.N. is turning into a joke. Most of the speeches criticize Israel. The web is full of hate speech, glorifying the Islamic Bomb as the Sword of Allah... All civilian aircraft in the U.S. and Europe were ordered grounded after the blasts occurred. My flight was re-routed to San Francisco. I joined up with Kiana and Kahoku, and we drove in their car across the United States. We pulled into Cider Junction this morning. After taking showers, we hiked out to Blue Spirit and were there about a half-hour before the Path opened..."

"I'm so happy you were," said Kara. "Any thoughts on the Path opening a year early?"

"Kalea, do you want to take this?" asked Mayoni.

Kalea smiled. "Sure. For the full-year jumps, we have the Path opening at one, two, and now three-year intervals. It seems our assumed doubling time was pessimistic. What's the next number after one, two, and three? Could be almost anything. Perhaps the Path will open again in four years. If the Path is following a Fibonacci progression, the Path will open in five years. Perhaps openings will remain fixed at three years, or even start to become more frequent. We'll just have to wait and see..."

Mayoni resumed talking. "I have a report to make about the plague, and Kalea and Hiapo have a report on the Blue Ring. Kikapua, which would you like to hear first?"

Kikapua was silent for a moment. He decided Mayoni still looked very distressed from giving her report on the nuclear explosions, and decided to give her a breather. "Let's hear about the Blue Ring first."

Hiapo spoke up. "Okay. Kalea and I have been testing a number of theories. Tal has been an extremely useful assistant. All of our discoveries are consistent with Kalea's model of the Blue Ring being a nested set of toroidal bubbles. The physical experiments so far have been very primitive. We've been sounding the torus with laser pulses. Kalea?"

Kalea took over the report. "Some of you may have noticed that when a flashlight is shined on the torus, the entire torus glows. Timed pulses of laser light reveal the effect is not luminescence, nor simple internal reflections. For a timed micro-burst of laser light, we estimate half the light is emitted by a torus echo-burst 10.4 microseconds later. One- quarter of the light is burst-emitted in 21 milliseconds, one-eighth in 43.7 seconds, and one-sixteenth in 89,566 seconds, slighter longer than an Earth day. Our guess is the progression continues. It's a factor of 2048. The next echo would be slighter longer than 5.8 years after the pulse... Earth years..."

"Any guesses why 2048?" asked Kikapua.

"Oh yes," said Hiapo. "Kalea's baseline model expresses bubble slippage as a shear flow on an eleven-dimensional spatial manifold. The theory predicts a factor of two doubling for each orthogonal coordinate available to the bubble... The math is complex, and still very incomplete..."

"Practical implications?"

"After three years, we're still at the beginning of our study, Kikapua," said Kalea. "We are currently focusing on the detailed spatial and frequency spectrum of the emitted light. There are indications we are getting shadows of internal control structure. But the shadows must be pushed back through the 11-D manifold before they are assembled. The computational requirements are immense. Hiapo and I are working on a way to bypass the need for such brute-force computational inversion..."

"Control structure? Control of what?"

"Exactly!" laughed Hiapo. "Kalea and I are convinced that the ring is a component of what once was a larger mechanical structure. We think the ring is designed to be controlled and interact with other systems... If we can ever understand the control standards, we might be able to open and close the Aina side of the bubble at will. Maybe even discover the true purpose the ring was designed for. All of this is at least a number of years in the future... It might be a lifetime of work..."

Kikapua opened the discussion to the council, but there were no further questions. He then asked Mayoni to report on her plague analysis.

Mayoni began with a description of Simon's death, leaving out most of his insulting behavior. She concluded by saying, "Lois and I have had many challenging debates about the plague. I suspect the plague's origin is tied to the X-tree lifeforms on Aina, that Aina is the ultimate source for the plague. I believe Simon's death is a critical clue for this. Lois still holds an extremely effective argument against my position. I cannot refute her. I feel trapped in a paradox."

"What is your theory about Simon's death?" asked Nalani.

"My theory is that the green pepper bush is a key piece of the puzzle. My conjecture is that it is an artificial life-form, perhaps designed to be an antidote for the plague, but for some reason only works as a vaccine. The abilities of such technologies are mind boggling. I don't understand how a society could evolve and survive such power if it were still inclined to use it as a weapon. The abilities are so enormous... I've thought of ideas to explain this. Perhaps a more primitive society, still advanced by our standards, suddenly made super breakthroughs, or suddenly gained access to other's super-advanced technology... I don't know..."

"Mayoni," asked Kikapua. "Could you say more of the difference between an antidote and a vaccine?"

"Sure. If I'm right, Lois and Tal and Kiana can throw away all their efforts for birth control. Catching the plague has nothing to do with whether you're on Aina or Earth. It has everything to do with whether you ate the green pepper vaccine before you were exposed to the plague agents."