Chapter 7: One giant leap!

Monday was spent on exercise and relaxation. Early in the morning I went jogging and made my way over to the less-visited southwest-coastal area of the island. I met a few early-risers walking the crushed-coral-covered trail leading along the beach but soon left them behind. When I arrived at my destination, a small rock-lined cove at the extreme western tip of the island, I retrieved diving gear from the local equipment shed and carefully waded in.

This side of the island had the larger reef system than those near the popular beach areas which I explored for the next hour. My only companions were a pair of aquatic drones, which Naomi insisted accompany me at all times while I was underwater. I was making my way slowly back towards the cove inlet when I received an incoming communication request.

It was from Jess Kyrvestad. He had been the thought-therapist who had helped me through the troubled mental aftermath of my self-imposed Mongolian exile. His message request was for verbal interaction only but I delayed answering and instead had my implant signal that I would call him back shortly when I was finished diving. Once I was safely back on shore and out of my gear, I allowed the connection.

“Jess! I’m sorry for the delay in responding but I was diving alone,” I said when we finally connected.

“No problem, John. I haven’t heard from you in a while and wondered how you are doing?” he inquired with his normal happy and confident voice.

“I’m doing just great, Jess. What can I do for you?”

“I hear you are headed back to the lunar Farside Station tomorrow via wormhole transport,” he said.

Hmm, that information was not widely known and I felt a bit of suspicion join my curiosity over his call.

“Currently that’s the plan. Why do you ask?” I answered carefully.

“I’d like to have a quick face-to-face meeting with you, John. Would it be possible for you to leave an hour early and meet with me at the transport hub?”

There was only one lunar-ranged transport hub currently operational on the Earth and it was the higher power wormhole facility recently constructed near the equator on the western end of the island of New Guinea. I thought about Jess’s request for a moment and decided there was nothing pressing preventing me from doing as he asked.

I was scheduled to leave at 10:00. If I departed an hour earlier that would put me on New Guinea two hours after noon local time. I used my implant to verify that the facility had the power reserves and an open time slot to bring me there earlier. It did.

“I will meet you at the transport hub at 14:00 local time,” I replied. “The lunar transfer is scheduled for about an hour after.”

“Thank you, John. I will arrange a meeting space for our chat. Hmm, what time will that be?” he paused, most likely consulting his own implant. “That’s a few hours after your normal breakfast time so I’ll skip having a meal ready when you arrive. See you tomorrow!” he said and abruptly hung up.

I terminated my end of the contact. I wondered what the scheduled meeting was all about as I returned to my compound.

I spent the rest of the morning engaged in wood carving in my workshop located in the clearing between the two main beaches. With the island’s normal balmy weather, I usually worked outside under a shade and rain canopy. I’d added a short fence around the perimeter of my work area to limit the distractions caused by the curious guests.

The fence was low enough to allow them to still see what I was doing, especially with their iris magnification, but it kept them far enough away to deter casual conversation. The fence also had the side benefit of keeping the occasional stray giant tortoise out of my shop area.

The gentle creatures had the annoying tendency to bump into my stool and workbench as they wandered around. Aside from scaring the hell out of me, the nudges also sometimes caused my finely sharpened carving tools to fall to the hard paving.

I’d grown used to seeing them wander around out of bounds because my guests often forgot to close the gate leading into the tortoise’s grassy meadow compound. We’d attached trackers to each of their shells and occasionally a mobile unit would shepherd them back to their enclosure before they wandered too far.

I was focused on my carving and was working on a blackwood sculpture of the head and naked torso of a woman I hoped shared the likeness of Angelina. I wanted to finish the sculpture and gift it to my friend before I left the island. So far the work was going well and I was happy with how the piece was progressing.

Stacked around me was an assortment of chunks of exotic wood which I planned to take with me when I returned to Farside Station. I’d had some shipped there months ago but those stocks were growing depleted. Though I could substitute extruded, machine-printed wood I still preferred working with the real thing whenever I could. The random imperfections of the real thing simply could not be replicated by a machine.

I was focused on the final polishing of Angie’s face when I was interrupted.

“That’s beautiful!”

I looked up to discover that Serenity had brought me lunch. I checked my chronometer and was surprised to see that it was already an hour past noon. I traded her my work-in-progress for the plate of food she had brought and let her inspect my work while I munched.

“What do you think, good enough?” I asked after swallowing a mouthful of sandwich.

She turned the glossy black figure around caressing its features with her fingertips. “Oh, this is Ms. Beraza!”

“I’m sure she would prefer that you called her Angelina,” I said. At least Serenity had recognized the subject of the sculpture as Angie. I relaxed as that was the only key requirement of the piece.

“I think this is lovely, Grampa. She will love it.”

I finished the lunch and Serenity stuck around watching me work and chatting. She then watched as I finished the carving by engraving my initials, the current date, and a short message on its bottom. When I was done I set the polished blackwood figure on the table for both of us to admire.

“Are you still leaving tomorrow?” she finally asked after updating me on her morning activities.

“Yes, it’s been a great vacation but I have to get back to work. You’ve done so well here that I’ve had little to do but relax. Thank you for that.”

She beamed at my praise. I was again reminded of how lucky I was to have found her to run the island.

“Remember, don’t burn yourself out. If you get tired running the place, let me know and I will come back or we can shut the place down for a while,” I added.

“I’m still having fun, Grampa, but I’ll remember.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing in a soft lounge chair on the rooftop patio. In between naps, I read a story by an old British science fiction writer whose works often included wormholes. I’d been hoping for some insight or two on using them in battle but so far nothing had come of my research which I thought might be useful against the Assemblage.

The books did include the idea of using wormhole technology to develop a form of faster-than-light starship travel. I’d have to discuss that possibility with Stellux AI sometime. Maybe it could form a team of AIs and a couple smart, imaginative humans to study and develop the concept.

My great-granddaughter joined me again well after dark. We snacked on pizza and spent some time in the roof-top hot tub. Later, when the air had settled and the skies had grown truly dark, I deployed my retro-looking telescope. She had never seen the planets and the moon via the naked eye or without digital enhancement and loved the views through the old-style optical instruments.

The scope was not truly authentic, as it included a state-of-the-art ultra-lightweight eighty-centimeter primary mirror on a fully AI-assisted computerized tracking mount. But still, I would have loved to own such a scope back before the reset. Hell, any good university back then would have been proud to possess such an instrument.

The next morning, I went to find Angie. I’d left her a message to contact me after she woke up and she had replied that she was currently between clients (I assumed not literally) and was at her quarters in the beach-area cottage. She loved my gift of the wood carving and gave me a long hug and a tender kiss after I had presented it to her.

We spent the next hour properly saying goodbye to each other. After a quick shower, I had to get going. I left promising to look her up the next time I was on the Earth. I also offered her a place to stay if she somehow found herself in my neighborhood on the far side of the moon.

Next, I stopped by the workshop and gathered up some hardwood carving materials which I’d be taking with me. I messaged Serenity to tell her I was leaving in ten minutes but she was tied up solving guest issues. She did offer to set that aside and to come see me off but I told her not to bother. Hopefully, with lunar travel now trivial (at least for me), I’d see her again in a few months.

I went to the middle of the aircraft landing area and messaged the transport hub that I was ready for my pickup. I had to wait a few minutes for the queues to clear before the targeting wormholes formed above me. I spotted them after hearing their formation “pops” and watched them triangulate my position and scan my surroundings.

I jumped when the larger, transport wormhole formed almost directly above me. It took a lot of will to remain still as it lowered and stabilized itself to just a few meters distance. I’d heard that many could not handle this part of the new travel routine without bolting. Those who couldn’t had to turn their shells over to their augments, at least for the insertion part of the transport.

I studied the wormhole aperture. From this angle, I could see the lighting effects caused by the distorted portal itself. The show was over quickly as the bottom of the transport tube appeared in the void and began extruding itself towards the ground directly in front of me. As it neared the surface, the transparent, curved hatch on the cylinder rotated open. I quickly stepped inside, twisting a bit to fit my large sack of hardwood in the tight chamber.

The hatch closed and there was a slight pause as the instruments built into the base of the cylinder verified the mass of my body and that of my wooden cargo. The momentum compensation machinery at the other end of the wormhole needed accurate measurements to properly balance my transfer. I looked up and watched through the top vision window as the umbilical connecting the transport cylinder to the still active wormhole aperture begin retracting.

Now came the part I hated. As I felt myself rise from the ground, the inflation bladders lining the inside of the tube quickly swelled, locking me tightly in position. I needed the restraints as the moment I passed through the wormhole and emerged at the transport hub in western New Guinea, down would likely be in some other direction from where my feet were currently pointed.

This was because the wormhole generator machinery at the transport hub was currently orientated to match the spatial momentum and direction vector of my island. With Heels in the Sand located in the western Indian Ocean and New Guinea in the western Pacific, this meant that there was over eighty degrees of longitude separating both locations. With the rotation of the Earth, the two points were traveling through space at almost right angles to each other.

That meant that I’d arrive in New Guinea lying almost on my back and the inflated bladders would keep me from being injured during the instant change-in-gravity. At least it would be better than when I had arrived on the Earth after leaving Luna. That time I’d come back to the Earth standing on my head and under a full gee of gravity, five times more than I’d experienced on the moon before I’d left.

I passed through the wormhole and was instantly almost a quarter of the way around the Earth. I closed my eyes tightly when I felt the sudden nausea caused by the instant change in my orientation. That moment occurred when the gods of physics decided that I was no longer there and was now here. Why it was perceived instantly by living nervous systems and not as a wave passing through our bodies was a mystery which the wormhole researchers were still working to fully understand.

When I felt my weight firmly on my back instead of my feet, and when my nausea had died down enough, I opened my eyes. I saw that the transport cylinder was now in the enormous, brightly-lit, hemispherical enclosure of the Earth’s first operational, lunar-ranged transfer hub. As the umbilical slowly pulled me away from the ultra-complex entwined-toroid majesty of the main wormhole generator, it also reoriented the cylinder so my feet were again pointed down.

The restraint bladders deflated and I was no longer squeezed inside the tube. I was now able to look around at the transfer hub. Behind me, the complex spatial-compensating apparatus began rotating on its gimbals to match the required vector for the next wormhole terminus point. There were still many visible heat shimmers radiating from the superconducting conduit coolant loops, as they rechilled after their recent high energy transfers.

I could hear the “hiss” as coolant was circulated to rid the equipment of the excessive heat caused by the rapid energy expenditure. There were even wisps of vapor and smoke drifting around the machinery. Perhaps ozone or a coolant leak? I looked up and spotted huge circulation fans drawing the vapors out of the chamber. I was glad the transport cylinder was sealed as the environment of the chamber was likely unhealthy.

Below the chamber’s floor, I imagined the ultra-capacitors charging up with the gigawatts of energy needed to punch the next hole through space and to spin up the compensating exotic matter to match the spatial motion vectors with the next target location. Unfortunately, there were no wildly-flashing lights or lightning bolt electrical discharges illuminating the machinery I was observing. Nothing to celebrate the amazing feats of engineering and physics which were occurring before my very eyes.

Leaving the wizardry of the wormhole generator behind, I turned and saw that my transport cylinder was being shunted towards one of the arrival and departure airlocks ringing the huge chamber. Moments later, the cylinder passed through a quick-acting door seal and was deposited inside the lock, the delivery umbilical detaching and retreating before the lock sealed behind it.

A chime sounded in the cylinder and a voice spoke. “Welcome to New Guinea, John Abrams Prime. I am Aeolus, the transport control AI. You are now in airlock six and you may leave your wooden cargo in the adjacent alcove during your stay at the station. Your departure window to Luna is scheduled for seventy-three minutes from now. Please return to this airlock no later than seventy-one minutes from now.”

I thanked the AI and waited for the airlock to cycle and the transport cylinder hatch to open. Despite being purged, the air inside the receiving lock still had traces of the cocktail of gases from the wormhole chamber behind. They were not quite strong enough to make my eyes water but I was glad they were being drawn away quickly. The room’s outer airlock door opened and I saw a smiling woman waiting for me in the alcove beyond.

I grinned back when I recognized my former stalker and, more recently, my biographer Adele Sol Chilean.

“Adele! I thought I’d be meeting Jess today? Not that I am unhappy to see you!” I said.

“He’s here,” she said as she stepped forward and gave me a quick hug. “He’s off looking for a suitable space to have your meeting. He just sent me a direction trace. Shall we go meet him?”

As Aeolus AI had instructed, I deposited my sack of carving wood in one of the many storage lockers and followed Adele out of the alcove. Beyond was a wide, curving corridor that appeared to circle around the outer perimeter of the transport megastructure. I immediately noticed that the corridor’s outside wall was perforated with periodic huge oval windows. I stepped up to the closest and took in the splendor of the New Guinea landscape.

The fake arcology in which this wormhole facility had been constructed was located on the southern edge of the central mountain range, running east and west, which bisected the large island. My implant’s compass indicated I was currently facing roughly southerly and we were high enough that I was just able to see the Pacific Ocean sixty kilometers away.

Below the window, closer to the station, was a vast expanse of emerald-green rain forest. The dense canopy was dotted with slowly drifting, darker-green blotches which were the shadows of the partly cloudy sky. This island clearly received more rainfall than Heels in the Sand and I hoped there would be an opportunity to step outside and look around before I was sent off to the moon.

Despite the fertile forest covering most of the scene, there was also plenty of modern infrastructure visible. The main examples were the five wide, clear-cut paths weaving through the jungle leading to this facility. Centered on each clearing was a large superconducting energy transfer conduit. The pipeline-like conduits were mounted on regular raised supports which elevated them above the jungle floor. Each support had tall, heat-exchanging radiators which kept the conduits thermally stable.

It struck me that the power conduits and their mounts looked familiar, as they resembled a crude oil pipeline that had been built to cross Alaska in my youth. The similarities were eerie, including the same regular expansion-controlling zig-zag routing of the conduits.

I spent a moment tracing the paths of each power line as they extended away from the facility. One ended just ten kilometers away at a large clearing which contained the recognizable outline of a large fusion power generating facility.

Another conduit wove its way to the distant southern coast, possibly leading to an offshore tidal generation plant or some distant underwater geothermal source. The remaining power supply lines faded off to the jungle’s horizons towards the east and west. It was clear from the display in front of me that this facility required an enormous amount of power. But, when compared to that needed to see me all the way from the Earth to the moon using rockets, maybe the energy expense was worth it.

When I finished marveling at the view I noticed Adele studying me. Her smile was just a bit too tight and I felt something was bothering her. She motioned towards the curving corridor to our right and we began walking again. I noticed movement behind us and turned to see a quadruped mobile unit following along behind, shadowing us. The station clearly had higher security in place than was typical.

“How’s the documentary coming along?” I asked, hoping to get her talking and possibly reveal what is bothering her.

“Good. We’ve finished the first draft and are now working on the final editing.”

She had finished writing my biography a year earlier, to some acclaim it turned out. Apparently, there had been enough interest in my recent activities that she now had the backing needed to develop it further into a full virtuality simulation. Despite periodic prodding from Adele, I’d so far avoided having to fully read the completed biography. I shuddered at the thought of now having to relive my own life and times in full virtual. Ugh.

“Guess who we commissioned to do the motion capture and translation of you into full virtual?” she asked.

At my shrug, she continued, “Chelsea Iberia! She was looking for a new project after finishing her Sioux Indian historical simulation and jumped at the chance to role-play you. She has been busy working in the translation matrix for the past three weeks.”

“Good for her!” I replied before adding, “I like Chelsea, so I hope this project increases her following instead of doing the opposite and ending her career.”

I had said that last in a half-joking manner. Chelsea had a great personality and I doubted that an occasional flop would slow her down. I wondered about the details of the project and asked, “Where are you producing the virtuality?”

“We have constructed a small studio in New Ulaanbaatar. We are actually using live imaging for some of the virtualization and wanted to be as close to the area where you spent your recent decades as possible,” she replied.

As I had hoped, the excitement of discussing her project was causing her to become more animated.

“There is only a half-dozen of us working on-location in Mongolia though. The rest of the team are spread around the planet, working from their facilities.”

We arrived at a wider juncture in the corridor. The larger space contained a bank of elevators and one opened as we approached. I entered and stood beside Adele and thankfully the security unit remained outside when the door slid closed. I looked at my companion and noticed her expression had regained the slightly nervous and forced smile from earlier.

“Why are you here Adele? Not that I don’t enjoy seeing you or catching up with your activities,” I asked, deciding to confront her unease head-on.

After a pause, she said, “I am being paid to consult about you. It seems I am something of a contemporary expert on the subject of John Abrams Prime these days.”

I wondered why Jess would go to all the trouble to hire a consultant. I had heard little from him since our counseling time together after I’d come back from my nomadic wandering. If he was curious about my recent activities, why did he not arrange to spend time with me and learn about them directly?

“Why is Jess so interested?” I asked.

“I don’t know all the details but I think Jess was also hired by someone else. I’m not sure who is responsible though. You’ll have to ask Jess,” she said dismissively.

I could tell the topic was upsetting her so I kept further questions to myself.

Adele went on, “But, I will say the pay is good! It was even arranged that I be transported here by wormhole which was the first time I’ve traveled that way. Even with the recent windfall of Scut I received from publishing your biography, I could never have afforded such an extravagance on my own.”

The high-power requirements of the new method of transport were a limiting factor and access to it was likely to remain limited. To help reduce casual usage, the AI advisory council had imposed steep fees for non-critical usage. The high fees worked to reduce demand while still allowing those with the means to use the method. This outlet also had the side benefit of acting as a revenue sink, not to mention that the Scut went to the ‘Forbin Three’, mainly, myself, Uxe and Rami.