{"id":2315,"date":"2021-11-06T12:19:35","date_gmt":"2021-11-06T19:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/?p=2315"},"modified":"2021-11-06T12:19:35","modified_gmt":"2021-11-06T19:19:35","slug":"gates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.evardsson.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/06\/gates\/","title":{"rendered":"Gates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

prompt:\u00a0\u00a0Start\u00a0your story with an unusual sound being heard.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

available at Reedsy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It started with a low rumble that continued far too long to be normal. As it continued, the frequency rose and the amplitude spiked in increasingly shorter intervals, causing the volume to pulse faster and faster as the rumble climbed into a ringing, rising tone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all the years that the Gravity Wave Research Center had been recording and converting gravity waves to sound waves, this anomaly was a first. The duration and non-randomness of it pointed to the possibility of intelligence behind the still-increasing waves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m telling you, it\u2019s the collision of a pair of pulsars. I\u2019m working on the model now.\u201d Andre typed away at his laptop, heavily chewed pen in his teeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d Liz said. \u201cWe\u2019re either looking at something made<\/em> by\u2026someone\u2026or we have a whole new thing to learn about in cosmology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andre raised his hands to either side of his face with a mocking grin. \u201cAliens!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liz sucked her teeth at him. \u201cOkay, be that way. Where\u2019s the data from KGOT?\u201d The Kuiper Gravity Observer Telescope was the furthest gravity wave telescope humans had deployed yet, in hopes of getting more and better data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHuh?\u201d Andre removed the pen from his teeth. \u201cYou sure it\u2019s in position for that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPretty sure.\u201d Liz pointed to her monitor, where a solar system map with the position of every planet and every man-made object outside of Earth\u2019s orbit. \u201cWe picked it up first at Jupiter\u2026JGOT. Then us, at the same time as the message from JGOT. Then Mars is here, where MGOT picked it up twenty minutes after us. That gives us a general direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFollowing that back, it takes us directly to KGOT.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWonder if there\u2019s a comms issue. I\u2019ll look into that,\u201d Andre said. \u201cIn the meantime, can we turn down the speakers? It\u2019s giving me a headache.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andre sent a system test message to the gravity telescope near the Kuiper belt, knowing it would be an eight-hour round trip. That out of the way, he went back to work trying to make his model of colliding pulsars match the gravity waves they were still seeing going on close to three hours now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUm, Andre, I think you should really check the logs for the KGOT.\u201d Liz\u2019s voice was tense with worry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andre switched tasks to look at the logs. They showed that the telescope was sending its regular messages every half-hour for the entire time that they had been recording the anomaly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow\u2026how could we pick it up here, but not there? I wonder if there\u2019s a malfunction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe\u2014,\u201d Liz started, but fell silent as the wave ceased. \u201cIt\u2019s done. Whatever it was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m still trying to get these models to match. It may not be colliding pulsars, if the results I\u2019m seeing are any indication.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the hours passed, Liz and Andre worked hard on trying to make some sense out of the strangeness of the wave. They had given up on hearing anything more from the anomaly, until an alert from KGOT showed up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLiz! KGOT started picking it up\u2026uh\u2026around four hours ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan you give me a more precise time?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, according to the logs, it started at 01:13:22.93114 Zulu.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liz entered the data into her solar system model showing the track of the gravity wave. \u201cThat would mean it came from\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInside<\/em> the solar system. Jupiter L4 Lagrange point to be exact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cImpossible. There\u2019s not enough matter in the entire solar system for a wave like that, much less the Trojans there.\u201d He returned to his model. \u201cIt would take at least<\/em> a supermassive black hole to generate a wave of that magnitude and duration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The videoconference phone chimed with its annoying song. Andre answered and looked to the screen. \u201cYeah?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey gravity nerds, I take it you have something big, right?\u201d The screen didn\u2019t show the caller, but a visual telescope view that looked warped, out of focus somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey Janice, what do you have?\u201d Liz asked. \u201cNeed help to focus your telescope?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNope. It\u2019s focused perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andre snorted. \u201cIf that\u2019s the case, why does it look smeared?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet me zoom out.\u201d The warped look stayed confined within a circle in the middle of the view, limned with a sparkling, blue light. Beyond the light, the rest of the view looked normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere\u2026where are we looking?\u201d Andre asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liz answered, \u201cJupiter L4, I bet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDing! Ding! Ding! You win a prize! I knew you were the smart one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStow it, Janice. Any idea what it is?\u201d Liz asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, this is going to be huge, but I thought I\u2019d show you guys first. I recorded this about ten minutes ago.\u201d The view zoomed back in on the warped, distorted look through the center of the anomaly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The warped view slowly began to redraw itself as a software algorithm tried to compensate for it. \u201cEither I\u2019m off my rocker or it\u2019s a gateway…to a bunch of other gateways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where once was an image of smudges of light, there was an image of hundreds of glowing circles with distortions at their centers. There were no other lights in the view; no stars, no reflecting nebulae, just the glowing circles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no way this is natural,\u201d Liz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, maybe,\u201d Andre said. \u201cBut still, I think you were right when you said we\u2019d have something new to learn about in cosmology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust wait,\u201d Janice said. \u201cHere comes the good part.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bright shape, like an elongated triangle, came out of one of the glowing circles and moved into another. With no sense of scale there was no way of determining its speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf those are the same size as the one here,\u201d Liz said, \u201cthat ship is the size of the moon. I first estimated its speed as three-quarters C, until I realized that the gates\u2026or whatever you want to call them\u2026seem to heavily warp space in their vicinity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat does that have to do with the velocity of the ship?\u201d Andre asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s three-quarters C relative to our view, but with the way the space between the gates is warped, the distances we think we see between them can be completely wrong. They may be right beside each other with the ship traveling at a leisurely fourteen thousand kilometers an hour. We just don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ho\u2014how many gates<\/em> do you see in there?\u201d Andre asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom this vantage point, we count just shy of seven hundred,\u201d Janice said. \u201cI think it\u2019s safe to assume thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2026or who<\/em> made these?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the real question,\u201d Liz said. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s going to keep us up at night until we know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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