Chapter 16

Future Interlude III: The Holographic Gravity Experiment

Aina time: 2:06 PM, day 150 of 1472 H.E.

Havika called out. "Inner hologram stable at target parameters. Kalea, you are clear to proceed."

"Thank you. Aegis, take the outer shell curvature down to 9.395, and then make a base stability measurement."

"Acknowledged..." After a few minutes he replied. "Base test complete. Outer shell curvature is at 9.395 meters per second squared, inner shell at negative 50,000 gravities. Kalea, we are right at the edge of losing the inner-shell hologram."

"I confirm..." said Mayoni, staring at her own displays.

Kalea turned and nodded at her sister. "Mayoni, this was your idea. Want to take control?"

"Yes... Thank you..." Mayoni took a deep breath. "Ajax, please begin elliptical deformation of the inner holographic manifold."

"Acknowledged. Targeting base spatial dimension... Beginning deformation now... Spherical at 1.00, elliptical at 1.01, elliptical at 1.05..."

Aegis called out, "Inner shell hologram still stable..."

Kalea raised her eyebrows and looked at him. "Well, I would hope so! We should be adding to its stability..."

Ajax continued calling out his numbers. "1.15... 1.20... Mayoni, how far should I go?"

"You're doing fine. Keep going until you start running out of solution space in the Mandelbrot. I'm hoping we can get very close to two..."

Several minutes of calm reports followed as Ajax tuned the holographic structure of the inner shell. "Elliptical at 1.994... elliptical at 1.995... elliptical at 1.996... I'm picking up M-3 oscillations..."

Mayoni called out immediately, "I see it too! Back it down to 1.995."

A moment later Ajax replied, "We're steady at 1.995, no oscillations..."

Mayoni nodded and then turned to her brother. "Havika, you have the honor."

Havika smiled back at his sister. "Decreasing curvature of outer shell, 9.38 and dropping..."

"It's working!" Aegis called out. "The inner shell is still stable!"

Havika continued to drop the gravitational curvature of the outer shell, the group becoming ecstatic over the results. He called out, "Kalea, what's the theoretical limit?"

Kalea replied, "With our current configuration for deformation, the model is predicting stability until 8.636 meters per second squared."

"We're there now! 8.637..." There was a pinging sound as the aluminum disk was suddenly released from the crushing 50,000 gravities. It shot down and banged into the bottom of the inner chamber.

Aegis called out. "Mark! Inner hologram collapsed at 2:15:07 PM. Outer curvature was at 8.63629 meters per second squared... It works!"

Mayoni laughed. "Something exciting for the evening news! Let's power down. We have a lot of data to analyze." Ten minutes later Mayoni and Kalea left the labs and took the elevator up to their apartment.

Earth time: Wednesday, 5:55 PM, September 8, 2010 Central Daylight Savings Time

Cindy dropped out of her sprint two kilometers after entering the peninsula. Off to her right was the main body of the island, across just over one kilometer of bay. The width of the peninsula was still almost 200 meters, but it was beginning to narrow rapidly. The rolling dunes that were hiding her position were also flattening out. She still had the option of running another kilometer along the tapering point, but then she would be at the point of land's end. Previous water measurements showed the temperature of the ocean and bays to be below 40F. Swimming across the bay was not an option.

Cindy looked back at the direction of her pursuers and gave a feral smile. Thinking they had her boxed in, they had taken the time to fan out and ensure she had no angle to leave the small peninsula. Cindy dived into the last of the arctic dunes for cover, panting heavily from her sprint. She tried to relax.

"Here goes! I'm in my car, my car, my car..." Cindy and Jim had done a great deal of experimenting over the past month, and had discovered a number of unusual properties about the transfers to and from Antelope Freeway and their arctic island. One of the interesting things they noticed was that they could appear anywhere on the arctic island from Antelope Freeway, and anywhere on Antelope Freeway from the arctic, but they could not make direct intra-location transfers. In both directions though, the key to the transfers was calmly thinking of the desired location and becoming bored and disinterested in the current location. That was why neither Cindy nor Jim could jump while they were being chased. Both had found it impossible to be bored by people running them down to kill them...

"My car... My car... Come on... My car... My car... Nice car... Nice plush seats... So nice... My car... So nice... My car... My car... My car... I can smell it!" Cindy felt herself sinking into the soft leather. She opened her eyes, saw the dashboard and sobbed in relief.

Meanwhile Jim was grimacing in horror as he stood two meters from the window and saw the rock coming straight at him. The rock hit the glass and bounced off, striking the attacking youth square in his face with full force. The youth fell over backwards from the vicious impact.

Jim slowly walked to the window and looked down. The youth from outside the door join his companion with the spear and they both stood around their fallen comrade. His nose was completely gone, crushed and pushed into his skull. Jim shuddered as he realized the fallen attacker was not breathing. He was just a kid.