“Well,” Nathaniel started. “You should have noticed our little project by now. Sorry about springing that blind test on you. I told the others that it was a bad idea, but I was overruled.”
Going by the slight smirk on the usually stoic Alana’s face, it was pretty clear who had overruled him. She had way too much sway for someone so petty. As Nathaniel continued, Jacob made a mental note to make the woman’s life miserable.
“When you last visited, there was an enormous amount of data collected by satellites and research sites across the globe. That data was gathered together and studied. While we still don’t understand the underlying principles behind the…what did you call them?”
“Phase coils,” Jacob added. “And before you ask, I don’t know how they function either, but I did bring a sample for study.”
“That will certainly speed things along.” Nathaniel smiled.
Even Alana perked up at that news. That didn’t stop Jacob from digging into her personal history. She was single and lived alone, no surprises there. According to her internet history, she had a cat. Jacob wasn’t about to go around harming pets just to get back at her, but she could inconvenience Alana. He cancelled her subscription food delivery. She would be forced to go out and buy her own cat food when her current supply ran out. Then she would have to waste her oh-so-precious time to figure out why her order wasn’t delivered.
“—layer of alternate space,” Nathaniel said.
Jacob mentally cursed his distraction and replayed what Nathaniel had just said in his mind.
“As far as we can tell, the phase coils act by shifting matter into a layer of alternate space.”
“Subspace?” Bob questioned.
Nathaniel winced and glanced at Alana, who looked like Bob had said the dumbest thing ever.
“Subspace implies the existence of space above or below ours,” Nathaniel recited what was clearly a rehearsed or forced answer. “Space has no direction; thus, alternate space is a more apt terminology.”
Alana looked smug when Nathaniel used the term, proving once again that she had been responsible for ensuring its use. She really was a joy killer.
Jacob was pretty sure he could force the issue and make them use subspace; it would definitely annoy Alana. It would also derail the meeting, so he pocketed that idea for later as Nathaniel carried on.
“Our instruments discovered that ‘alternative space’ has a certain wavelength, for lack of a better term, that can and does intersect our layer. What we built was a device to block out those wavelengths. The signal can’t propagate into this alternative space, but it does disrupt the alternate layers as they touch our own, making it impossible to connect to them around the devices.”
“Oh!” Bob said excitedly. “Like noise cancellation.”
“Yes—” Nathaniel began.
“No,” Alana interrupted.
Jacob looked between the annoyed woman and the exasperated NASA engineer. “I’m pretty sure that was a yes or no answer, so which is it?”
Alana huffed. “Comparing what the device does to simple noise cancellation is like calling the Mona Lisa just a painting. It is a gross oversimplification of a highly complex series of interactions.”
“Which results in cancelling out the wavelength,” Jacob drawled. “Let’s stick with the less scientific terms, okay.”
“If you wish to remain ignorant of the true complexities involved, be my guest,” Alana replied, sounding almost hurt.
Jacob nodded to Nathaniel to continue.
The man eyed his colleague strangely before clearing his throat. “Where was I. Oh yes, the wavelength. We don’t have enough satellites up yet to blanket the Earth. The ones you encountered were all tuned to different frequencies, since we weren’t sure whether any of them would work.”
Jacob looked at the man in confusion. “Didn’t you just say they were tuned to block the frequencies?”
“Sort of,” Nathaniel said as he waggled his hand back and forth. “While Alana is correct, your friend isn’t entirely wrong. It’s much like trying to cancel noise. You first have to detect the noise, then output the counter signal. Your test helped us narrow down this window, so we can more effectively target the correct noise. If the satellites over the US hadn’t worked, we would have either had you wait until new ones were in position or had you visit other sites across the globe until we got a confirmation that the signal worked.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Wouldn’t a broader signal range be better?” Jacob asked. “That’s how radar jamming works.”
“Yes, but that requires multiple different devices all blocking a certain band. And since we don’t know whether blocking all wavelengths is even necessary, we decided to focus on a smaller subset.”
President McConnell cleared his throat. “What Mr. Stern fails to mention is that these satellites are prohibitively expensive. Narrowing down their operational window significantly reduces that cost.”
“Ah,” Jacob said in understanding. The Earth would need dozens, if not hundreds, of the devices to blanket the entire planet. Cutting the costs early might make or break their mission plan.
“We could narrow it down even further,” Nathaniel said. “But we only have readings from the ship that Franky DeAngelo crashed, and your current vessel.”
“Wait, Franky’s last name is DeAngelo?”
“You didn’t know?” Nathaniel looked at him.
“Never came up,” Jacob admitted.
I guess that explains the D in his gamer tag. Not very original that one.
Then Jacob remembered something. “There should be more data from back during our abductions.”
“You really think we didn’t check that?” Alana scoffed. “Those signals matched the wreck in Brooklyn.”
Jacob ignored the woman as he popped back to the station. “AI?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Do you have recordings of transition signatures?”
“Yes, Captain. Would you like me to generate a report of them?”
“Yes, then send the data to my storage.” With that done, Jacob popped back into the drone in Washington and addressed the group. “I’ll have some new transition signatures for you after this meeting.”
The three individuals all perked up at the news, but Jacob suspected each had a very different reason for their reaction.
There really wasn’t much to discuss after that point. They notified him that the satellites were now turned off to tweak their settings, and he was free to move about as he pleased. They would leave them off until he departed.
While Jacob appreciated the gesture, it was unnecessary. He hadn’t been sitting idle during the meeting; that had been one of his avatars. His true self was back on the station, dissecting the device and adding improvements to it for his own use. He was also reverse-engineering ways to bypass the effect. It was surprisingly hard, but he was up to the challenge.
Finding novel ways to bypass technology had actually become a bit of a hobby of his since his last visit to Earth. Maybe even before that. He had tricked the station AI into making him the Head of Station Services, amongst other roles, after all. Figuring out the weakness in the satellite’s design took no effort at all. It helped that Jacob could run hundreds of simulations at a time. The hard part was figuring out how to utilize that to his advantage.
The trick turned out to be rapidly switching the wavelength that the coils generated. Even if the switching remained in the device’s operation band, it made it impossible for the subspace canceler to compensate quickly enough. It also tore apart the ship in the simulations, but he had addressed the original problem, so he considered it a win. The rest he could figure out later.
The meeting ended, and Bob and Jacob had a quick photo-op with the president. It was an annoying waste of time, but since his avatar had to suffer through it and not himself personally, he permitted it to happen.
Then he was asked to do an actual sit-down interview, and his damn avatar agreed because it knew it wouldn’t have to do it. For the first time, Jacob experienced something weird. He was yanked into the drone body by the avatar, which swapped places with him. Apparently, his disdain for public speaking had transcended to even his avatars, and they were just as petty as him.
The other avatars locked him out as well when the first told them what was going on. “Traitors!” Jacob yelled into the digital ether as he was forced to sit through the TV interview. He could have forced the issue or deleted those avatars and made new ones, but he suspected the new ones would do the same thing because he would have done the same thing if he were in their shoes.
***
Captain Letnor’s ship returned to normal space, and he quickly pulled up his console. He had been past the fringe of the dead zone for weeks now, and he could only afford a few more transitions before he needed to head back for repairs and service. His little scout ship was designed for this sort of long-range reconnaissance, but it still took a toll on the vessel and crew.
Thankfully, the crew was small, as was the ship.
“Anything?” he asked the sensor operator as he studied the system layout. It appeared that the star had eight planets and an asteroid belt.
“There was definitely a fight here. I’m picking up debris from a few dozen ships. All of it is old enough to indicate they were from the Concord War. There are also some weak electromagnetic signals emanating from deeper in the system. The computer is trying to catalog them now.”
Letnor didn’t hold his breath. That wasn’t the first time they had encountered weird signals since he had been ordered to search for these humans. It turned out the dead zone wasn’t nearly as dead as everyone was led to believe. At least five of the planets that were visited by the Imperium’s planetary conditioning vessels had survived their terraforming process.
The species on those planets had recovered, and their technologies had advanced. Most were barely entering their technological infancy, with crude communication systems, but one had actually killed itself off in a nuclear war some four centuries back. He included a note in his report along with a suggestion to sweep the dead zone for other possible concerns, so they could be eliminated before they broke free of their planet’s gravity wells.
“Sir,” the sensor operator said in confusion. “I’m picking up a signal.”
“What sort of signal?” Letnor asked.
“Well, it appears to be an FTL comm relay.”
“What? How is an FTL comm relay way the hell out here?” Letnor knew there were no t’uk relays in this area. The ones the Astryx bought were tracked and monitored.
“The signal doesn’t match our current technology, sir, but the computer is convinced it’s an FTL comm relay.”
Letnor straightened at that. “Show me the data.”
When Letnor looked over the data, he realized the signal was that of the old comm network. He had been briefed on their target, and while most of the data was useless, it looked like not all of it was. He gave a predatory smile. “I believe we have found our target. Take us in and ensure the stealth systems are running at full power. I want to see this human planet for myself.”