CHAPTER TEN
Return
The X-100 descended through the clouds gracefully like an eagle preparing to attack its prey. Melissa watched it peek through the light cloud cover from the observation pavilion, just a few hundred feet from the landing strip in the middle of the Nevada desert. She dabbed his forehead with the handkerchief, trying desperately to dry her head as much as possible, but the heat pouring down from the Sun was having none of it. The plane physically looked relatively undamaged from what she could see, but she already knew that the damage, what Alex had briefly described over the radio, wouldn’t be visible externally anyway, save for the missing secondary dome. The real damage was all internal, and it wasn’t so much damage as it was a loss, namely the now missing hyperstealth drive.
The one part of the X-100 that Melissa wanted most to not be damaged or lost. She recoiled at the thought.
You asshole. Alex is the most important part of that plane. Not your stupid fucking plane.
It was sometimes easy for Melissa to forget her priorities because the X-100 represented the culmination of her life’s work, her ultimate legacy for all time, the thing that people would remember her for. Not just those in the military industrial complex or those in the aviation engineering community or even the physics community. No, this creation of hers represented a fundamental advance in humanity’s understanding of the universe and their ability to manipulate it. Proving that the hyperstealth drive worked was far more important than simply being an ultimate weapon in the U.S. arsenal. She was proud of helping her country, that was true, but what it represented was far more important than even that.
Still, she knew she was selfish when it came to her masterwork. It was, in a sense, a form of immortality, and she knew it. Even though it was a weapon of war and would potentially bring death, it was, arguably, worth those deaths. The achievement, the insights, and the understanding it was built on would be transformative. There would no longer ever need to be a shortage of resources for one thing: simply travel to an alternate reality and bring back anything you need. Yes, humanity would have to carefully select parallel universes where life didn’t exist (or at least not human life, Melissa knew would be the reality of it) to not mindlessly kill life in those universes. But that aside, phrases like “we have all the food in the universe," Melissa knew, would have new meaning after this.
There was also the exploration factor. With the laws of physics as they were known before this flight, there would never be a way to reach another star system, let alone other planets, at least not over timeframes that anyone cared to ponder. Even if there was intelligent life all over the universe, humanity could never hope to reach it given what humanity understood of propulsion technology, not without resorting to ideas like generational ships that would, as the name implies, take generations to reach even relatively near destinations. But, parallel universes would allow that exploration easily: since all possibilities are represented in the many-worlds interpretation, humanity had only to find the correct universe in which the planet they wished to explore occupied the same spatial location as Earth in the home universe. They would effectively arrive on an extraterrestrial world instantly by moving to that parallel universe without all the annoying difficulty of traversing the vast distances of space. They could return with the knowledge of what was there, and then those generations-long journeys wouldn’t seem so insurmountable because at least what was waiting on the other side of the trip wouldn’t just be guesswork.
The mind boggles at the possibilities! Melissa could foresee all those opportunities, and she truly understood the gift her work was to the human race. And all of it was a product of her mind, her singular genius, and that wouldn’t soon be forgotten regardless of the application of those ideas. Her work represented effective immortality!
But now, all that might be lost. She needed more information, and it was only her husband and the data recorders on the now arriving plane that could provide it.
The whole thing may have been a massive failure, which is the thought that was gnawing at her now. Although she had a great deal of data already from the ground sensors, and that data did seem to be indicating the X-100 had indeed slipped out of our universe, there was no way to know for sure until she reviewed the in-flight data recorders. After all, no data could be transmitted across universe boundaries, so there was no possibility of obtaining that data remotely, it had to be recorded and recovered later.
In fact, there was a possibility that the X-100 never even left this universe at all. There was so much electromagnetic radiation created by the hyperstealth drive that it may well have interfered with the data transmissions, and could even have distorted radar waves used to track the aircraft. Yes, she could very well have created a perfect electromagnetic stealth system. The military would love that just the same as if it had worked as expected since the result would be an even more efficient stealth system than they had already. It was even possible, although unlikely, that the EM distortions were such that visible light would be refracted around the X-100, rendering it invisible even to the human eye. That would make it almost in effect the same as if the plant had indeed left our universe.
All of this was possible. But if it was true, it meant that slippage between parallel universes had failed. It would mean that her theories were in some way flawed, or the technology was, and either way her legacy, her life’s work, was essentially a failure as well, whether the military saw it that way or not. Melissa would see it that way, and that made her tense beyond words.
She silently admonished herself again.
You should be feeling tense because your husband might have just survived the closest brush with death in a long career of brushes with death he’s ever had, and that makes you an incredible asshole for thinking about your precious legacy.
She was growing more anxious with each passing moment, all these thoughts, and more, running through her head, as she watched the X-100 touchdown and gradually slow and eventually come to a stop about a thousand feet down the runway. Slowly, as if to torture her further, the plane began to turn to face the observation pavilion and started rolling towards her. Melissa could make out Alex in the cockpit, but just barely. As the X-100 taxied towards her, she began to see her husband more clearly, and she couldn’t remember a time he had ever looked as worn out as he did then.
It looked to Melissa like Alex had aged years. He looked tired, dead tired, and he also wore another expression that Melissa would have sworn Alex’s face wasn’t even capable of making: fear. Or dread perhaps. Melissa wasn’t sure, but in either case, it was an alien expression for Alex.
Melissa began to approach the X-100 as Alex was opening the cockpit hatch. She started running towards him, anxious to hear what Alex had to say. She was moving so fast in fact that she was out-pacing the ground crew who would take care of the aircraft. She beat them there by about 30 seconds, just as Alex was finishing climbing down the built-in escape ladder. He landed on the ground just as Melissa got there.
“So,“ Alex began, “did you miss me?”
Melissa couldn’t help herself: she threw his arms around Alex as a flood of emotions washed over her. She began to sob as they overwhelmed her.
Alex would never have admitted it, but that same wave of emotion was washing over him as well. He was glad to be back, to a degree he had never experienced before. He felt fortunate to be alive, happy to be back on Earth and most especially to see Melissa again because as of just a few minutes ago, he was fairly sure he never would again.
Alex hugged Melissa back, tightly.
“Well, I guess so, huh?”
“Too much paperwork if you hadn’t made it back.”
Had anyone else heard what she said they might have thought it was unbelievably cold, but Alex understood. She was trying to mimic his mechanism of using humor to defuse tension. It worked, at least for Alex.
Just then, Major Alcheck and the ground crew arrived, and Alex and Melissa broke their embrace, realizing it was time to get down to business.
“Captain, glad to have you back!” Alcheck exclaimed. There was more warmth in his tone than either Melissa or Alex would have believed possible from the man. Alex managed a quick salute.
“Thank you, sir; I’m glad to be back. Very glad actually.”
“I know you must be exhausted Alex, but as I’m sure you can guess we need a debrief ASAP. Are you up to it?”
Alex knew he could have said no and faced no repercussions, but it wasn’t his style.
“Let me just have a few minutes to get cleaned up and grab a bite to eat please Major. I should be good to go after that.”
“Very good Captain, we’ll meet you in the briefing room in, say, 30 minutes? Doctor Wakeman, please see that your guinea pig is well-tended.”
Was that a smirk on Major Alcheck’s face? Melissa and Alex both wondered the same thing at the same time, looked at each other and simultaneously replied:
“Yes, sir!”
Alex leaned over and whispered in Melissa’s ear:
They both began to laugh as they hugged one more time and then started towards the observation pavilion together.
Major Alcheck, seemingly ignoring them, spun and began giving orders to the ground crew quickly and efficiently. There was important work to be done, and he would see it done. He directed data recorders be pulled from the X-100 and immediately loaded into the data processing system in the control room where Melissa and the rest of the science team could begin examining it.
Thirty minutes, three large ham-and-cheese sandwiches and over two gallons of Gatorade later and Alex arrived in the conference room, Melissa right behind him. Alex knew this conversation was going to be bizarre, and he guessed that’s why his head was pounding so much. He thought it was just hunger and thirst, but those issues were taken care of now. In fact, he was starved tremendously, and Melissa couldn’t believe how much he had eaten and drank, especially in such a short time. He was a military man, so eating fast and large was second nature, but this was beyond the norm.
“You’d better slow down, or you’ll be puking for the next hour.“ Melissa had told him.
He shouldn’t have been hungry or thirsty at all: he had eaten a good breakfast only an hour or so before the flight, and he wasn’t gone for more than a few minutes, so, he’d eaten no more than two or three hours ago at the most. His SEAL training meant that he could go days without food and he would barely get hungry for at least a day into it. It was a bit odd to be sure.
Then again, so was traveling to Jupiter in an airplane that was never intended to fly out of the atmosphere, he thought to himself, as he popped his tenth aspirin to try to get the damned headache under control.
Major Alcheck was at the head of the table, and a number of technicians were seated on both sides. A seat was left for Alex at the other end of the table, with a place for Melissa right next to him. Up on the wall, on the various large monitors that were seemingly all around them, were various readouts from the onboard data recorders. Melissa recognized the expression on the face of the technicians who were looking at the data. They all had the exact same expression.
They were completely, totally and utterly perplexed.
As Alex and Melissa sat down the low murmuring of voices died down quickly as Major Alcheck began to talk.
“Doctor Wakeman, I know you’ve been helping Alex since his return and you haven’t had a chance to look at the data yet, but I’ve had the team start without you and what they’re seeing is, to say the least, fantastic. Alex, could you tell us what you saw after the hyperstealth drive was engaged? We have to know if what we’re interpreting these readings to mean is correct.”
Alex sat up straight in his chair and looked around the room. At least two dozen people, men and women, scientists, technicians, and military officers were now all absolutely silent, eyes fixed on him, waiting with baited breath for the next words he would say. He looked at Melissa, who was looking even more anxious than everyone else in the room combined and Alex knew there was just a single word he had to say.
“Jupiter."
At the instant, he said the word the room erupted in conversation. The technicians began debating data points, trying to determine how to put that knowledge in context. Melissa, still staring at Alex, blinked several times before finally snapping back to her normal mode of operation: analysis. Cold, hard, logical reasoning. She quickly jumped out of her seat, grabbed the nearest control tablet, and began pulling up data on the monitors.
All the anxiety she felt less than an hour ago was now faded, replaced by elation.
“If that’s true, then the test was a success!”
Alex noted that his headache was finally beginning to subside - nearly 5,000 milligrams of aspirin would do that, he figured.
“Well, I’m not sure I’d call it a success, but it was something.”
“Doctor Wakeman,” Major Alcheck said, “How is this possible? How could the X-100 have traveled to Jupiter?”
“Well, it really didn’t, major. At least, not in the sense of normal travel. What must have happened is that the hyperstealth drive pushed the X-100 into a parallel universe much further away than planned. In that universe, Jupiter must have occupied the same relative spatial location as Earth does in this one.”
Melissa stopped short as she realized what that meant.
“Alex, according to these readings, you were far inside Jupiter’s gravity well. Any closer and the X-100 wouldn’t have survived more than a few seconds more. In fact, you’re lucky it survived as long as it did. It wasn’t made for space travel obviously and not with the stresses it was experiencing from the intense gravity.”
Alex rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, I kind of figured that part out myself, Melissa”.
Melissa frowned at him and continued
“I’m looking over the readings from after the universe jump. That was quick thinking Alex, shooting the explosive pack. I can see what happened here, but can you describe it for us?”
Alex began recounting the story, as his headache calmed down even further to just a dull pounding now. He told everyone in the room, who were all utterly transfixed and hanging on his every word, how he had suddenly found himself staring the gas giant planet in the face. He described his struggle to pull the ejection handle (he made sure to give Melissa a “tisk-tisk” face at that point!) and how he managed to get his sidearm free trigger the explosives.
The room fell silent for at least thirty seconds after Alex finished before anyone spoke. In the end, it was the only person in the room who really could have spoken at that point: Major Alcheck.
“Captain, I think that’s enough of a debrief for now. I’d like you to stay in medbay tonight, just to be safe.”
“I’m fine Major, nothing a little sleep won’t fix.”
“I’m sure that’s true Captain, but just the same. Medbay.”
“Yes, sir,” Alex said, as he got up out of his chair. He gently put his hand on Melissa’s shoulder.
“See you tomorrow babe”.
Melissa was glued to her tablet at that moment, studying the readings intensely. She barely registered Alex’ contact, but just.
“Uh, yeah, sure Alex. Tomorrow.”
Alex smiled at his wife, who he knew was more alive in these moments when there was a scientific mystery to be solved than at any other time. She’d be puzzling over the data all night, consumed by figuring everything out as quickly as possible. He didn’t mind at all that he didn’t have her full attention. He understood her. He knew that she loved him completely and deeply, of that he was absolutely certain. But, he also knew that she loved her work completely and deeply with absolutely certainty. It would have been worrying to Alex if Melissa wasn’t consumed by this mystery now.
But, given that she was, he wasn’t going to get much of her attention at the moment. Might as well get some rest he thought to himself. He certainly was exhausted by the experience, he was certain of that as well. With that thought, he turned to Major Alcheck.
He silently nodded to the Major one last time, who was himself getting up and preparing to leave, as Alex walked out the door of the conference room, the thought of his head on a pillow filling his mind with anticipation.
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Melissa was intensely focused on the data displayed on her tablet as the other technicians in the room all began filing out behind Major Alcheck, still debating various points of technical minutia among themselves.
The room fell silent, a fact which Melissa didn’t even notice as the solitude engulfed her.
She did, however, notice that she was rubbing his temples. Her head was beginning to pound, an intense headache coming on out of nowhere.